TIFU by being neurodivergent to a cop.

So this actually happened in 2008 but everyone I tell this story to loves it, so I thought I’d share.

Back in 2008, I was 18, I had just graduated high school and my older brother took me to Chicago for a Supernatural convention that I saved up for.

No parents, just me and my brother driving across states listening to music and being idiots. To fully understand this story, you need to picture me as Hot Topic throwing up all over me. Thick black eyeliner, giant teased blonde hair, bright colors.

While we were in Chicago, I convinced my brother to take me to Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery as I was an avid paranormal fan, but being 2008 finding the true path to the cemetery wasn’t straightforward, I had to hunt paranormal forums and websites as the original path was taken down by the town.

We finally found it and I was beyond excited because the cemetery sits near a pond that supposedly had ties to Al Capone dumping bodies there. Instead of this scaring me like a normal person, I thought it was the coolest thing imaginable. We wandered around filming with my brand new camcorder but the battery on the camcorder started draining really fast then died.

I was never able to get the camcorder to turn on again and to this day I still have it somewhere in my house, permanently shut.

Now here’s where I made a series of…choices.

I wanted souvenirs from the cemetery, but even teenage me thought taking pieces of gravestones was a bad idea because I didn’t want to get cursed.

So instead I took a couple small rocks from the dry river bed nearby. Then while leaving the woods I found a broken piece of porcelain on the ground and decided to pocket that too.

The night before, my brother and I had also stayed up partying pretty late and because I was 18 and gross in the way teenagers are, I decided not to shower before driving home since “I’m just sitting in the car anyway.” By the time we left the cemetery and headed back to New York, my makeup had smeared into full raccoon mode, my teased hair had become a tangled nest, and I was wearing this long white trench coat with thin black stripes on it.

At some point in Ohio around dusk, my brother finally let me drive, he resisted because I had just gotten my license but he was tired. He immediately fell asleep in the passenger seat while I drove through foggy dark Ohio.

Then suddenly a car came flying up behind me really aggressively and before I even had time to process what was happening, blue and red lights flashed me.

I had never been pulled over before and instantly panicked. I pulled over and the cop walked up to my brother’s side first. Since I was nervous and stupid, I assumed that meant he wanted to talk to my brother, so I just sat there silently while my brother answered questions.

Eventually the cop looked at me and asked why I wasn’t speaking and I honestly said, “I thought you wanted to talk to my brother because you were at his window.”

Apparently this irritated him because he immediately came to my side of the car and told me to step out. He walked me back to the cruiser, had me put my hands on the hood, and before frisking me asked if I had anything sharp in my pockets that could hurt him.

Now unfortunately I am a very honest person.

So I said, “No officer, just a couple of rocks.”

The man’s eyes lit up like a Christmas Display. He reached into my pocket at lightning speed, then pulled out his hand, staring at the rocks in total disbelief.

I looked down and added, “Oh, and a piece of porcelain.”

In my head, I thought he might be upset because technically porcelain could be sharp and I hadn’t specified it.

He sat me in the back of the cruiser while he ran my information and asked me multiple times how I knew my brother and what we were doing. Because I was nervous, I massively overshared and ended up explaining the entire plot of Supernatural to this man and telling him all about the convention and the haunted cemetery.

Eventually he explained he’d pulled me over because I was drifting over the fog line a little. Which, to be fair, it was dark, foggy.

He let me go with a warning.

When I got back in the car, I finally looked in the mirror and really saw myself for the first time that night. The smeared eyeliner, the teased hair, the trench coat, the shaking, the rocks and broken porcelain in my pockets. Then it hit me.

I looked over at my brother and said, “I think that cop thought I was a crack addict.”

Then I made my brother drive the rest of the way home because I was too traumatized to continue.

TL;DR: After visiting one of America’s most haunted cemeteries in 2008, I took a few rocks home as souvenirs, got pulled over later that night looking completely unhinged, and calmly informed a cop I had “just a couple of rocks” in my pocket during a frisk.