A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post called Courtroom Chastity about my having to report for Jury Duty at our county courthouse, and pass through metal detectors at the door while wearing the Queen’s Keep. In that post, I wrote about a little business-card sized note that I keep in my wallet in case of “emergency,” with a brief explanation of what I am wearing and why I could be setting off an alarm. I did mention at the time that there was another somewhat funny story that I might eventually share related to this particular note..
I don’t know how many readers caught that, but I did have at least one request to tell that story, so here it goes! 🙂
First a little background: I first came up with the idea several months ago of carrying a note on me, just in case I ever unexpectedly found myself at a place where I had to pass through a metal detector and might have to explain myself to security. It took a little bit of thought to determine exactly what I wanted it to say, and I believe I did a fairly good job of getting right to the point with it! It also took a little bit of trial and error to get the font, spacing, etc. just right so that when printed it would be no larger than a business card and therefore fit nicely in my wallet. I got it figured out, and cut one note down to size to place in my wallet, but still had a couple full sheets of paper with this printed on it, which I was going to throw out whenever I got home. Yes, I was actually doing this during some down time at work–I just had to make sure to rush to the printer every time I tried a new setting, to make sure nobody else picked up my paper and wondered what the heck was going on! 🙂
Anyhow, I had placed the “extra” note in my backpack-style work laptop bag to take home. Once home, I never seemed to remember to actually take it out, so it stayed in my backpack for at least a couple of weeks. Nobody else is ever in my bag for anything, so it was perfectly harmless, but here’s where the story gets interesting!
One morning when we got up to go to work, Angel and I discovered that both of our vehicles had been broken into outside our house.. Everything was emptied out of the consoles and glove compartments and thrown around the cars. There were a few items missing from both vehicles–mostly minor that we would never really miss, but the most notable thing that was stolen was my laptop bag, with a work laptop inside! Of course we immediately called the police, who were already in the neighborhood because apparently there were a number of cars all up and down the street that were all hit on the same night.
We filed a report, and I alerted my company that my laptop had been stolen. At that point, even the police officers were doubtful that we would ever see it again. But miraculously, a couple of hours later they actually caught the guy who did it, at a grocery store just a few blocks away! Not exactly a criminal mastermind here! In the end they were able to pin several dozen car break-ins on this guy from the past few months, so I was very fortunate that they were able to bring him in so quickly after hitting OUR vehicles! The suspect was caught completely red-handed, actually wearing my backpack with my computer and other misc. items inside. He had also stuffed it completely full of other junk that he had stolen from other cars as well!
I was asked to come down to the police station to identify my property. When I arrived, they had already completely emptied the contents of my bag onto a table. I had to go down the line and point out everything that belonged to me, so they could catalog it. Laptop, power cord, cordless mouse, USB thumb drive–check, check, check, and check. There’s the basics of what would be EXPECTED to be in a computer bag! Ok what’s next… Cheap company T-shirt I had gotten the previous week, a couple pairs of sunglasses from our car, underwater camera from our last vacation (so THAT’S where that had disappeared to!), umbrella, bottle of ibuprofen, etc. etc. etc.!
Oh, and now here’s this slightly crumpled piece of paper with some tiny printing up in the corner… I didn’t even have to look at it very closely, as I knew it was mine! I pointed it out, and it was immediately clear that the officer had read it! He raised his eyebrows a bit and tried to hold back a bit of surprise when he asked “Oh, Really?!” Chances were, every officer in that room had already read it as well, and probably had a few chuckles from it before I had gotten there! I tried to move on as quickly as possible, but of course now I was stuck and had to have a quick conversation with the man about chastity.
Fortunately, the conversation really wasn’t as awkward as I might have expected! The officer was extremely professional about it, and seemed to be genuinely interested. He asked if the note was something I would use with TSA, as an example. I kind of flinched at that one a little bit and said I wasn’t so sure about that; I probably wouldn’t have the guts to actually try to go through Airport security while wearing a device! But something like a flight, would typically be planned well enough in advance that I would be able to get it off ahead of time. I mainly kept the note around for more “unexpected” things, like if I would get last-minute tickets to a baseball game (though I now know THAT one isn’t an issue!), or amusement parks, or if I suddenly had to enter a secure data center and pass through metal detectors for my job… Everyone has to go through some sort of security at various times in life, and it can’t always be planned far enough ahead of time for someone in chastity to ask their key-holder to let them out for it!
This was the first time that somebody I was talking to in real life (other than my wife, of course!) knew that I was standing there locked in a steel chastity device! I know the police must see a TON of strange things in their line of work, and must be able to go with the flow and stay focused and professional at all times, and this officer did an excellent job of that! I have no idea if he had ever come across anything chastity related before, either through his job or personal life, but he was very non-judgmental about it so that was quite a relief!