He tapped on the glass and I unrolled the window.

“Can I see your driver’s license?”

I handed the cop my license and watched as he walked away from my car and started talking to another cop.  He didn’t run my license through his patrol car computer.  I wondered why.  He came back, leaned on the door frame, and looked inside the car.

“Do you have a gun in the car?” he asked.

I glanced in the rear view mirror at my 11 year old son Gabriel and his friend Cyrus.  They looked confused, astonished.  So did I.

“No,” I answered.

Are you kidding me?  A dad in his Toyota Camry with two 11 year old boys in the back and a Safeway club card in his wallet?  Seriously?

“Do you have any weapon of any kind in the car?”  I glanced at the Swiss Army knife which lives in the console between the driver and passenger seats, wondering if the cop saw it, wondering if it counted as a “weapon.”

Again I answered no.  The cop handed me back my license and said, “We got a report of a gun and a red Toyota.”

We weren’t going anywhere.

Eight squad cars had descended on the high school parking lot after the fight, blocking off the only entrance and exit.  The SUV in front of me was the first car stopped, and behind me the line of cars wound back into the parking lot.

Cyrus’ father Bill and I, and our two sons, had been walking out of the parking lot together after my older son’s JV game when the fight broke out.

A teenage girl started yelling at a teenage boy.  She was getting in his face and cursing him up and down.  Suddenly she lunged.  He wasn’t shy about fighting back.  They fell to the asphalt, grappling.  Others jumped in on both sides, and it turned into a parking lot scrum.  About half a dozen kids were throwing kicks and punches.

“I never get involved in these things,” said Bill.  “You don’t know what kind of weapons they could have.”  Bill is a fit, compact man, and had played football in high school.

“Plus they’re teenagers,” I added.  “No impulse control.  They’d stab you without even thinking about it.”  I hadn’t played football in high school, or any other team sport – the occasional game of horse shoes was all the exercise and character building I needed.

“Why aren’t there security guards here?” Bill asked several times, glancing back at the fight.

“Hey, at least it makes for a little excitement,” I glibly added.  We kept on walking.

I felt sheepish, cowardly.

I wished I could have a little do over.   Hell, I rewrite scripts for a living.  All this scene needed was a tweak, really.  Well, maybe more than a tweak, but certainly less than a page one rewrite:

I trotted over to the teens and yelled, in my deepest voice, “Knock it off!” Problem was, they turned their attention to me, and pounced with fists and sneakers.   I got in a few good haymakers, but soon I tasted blood and tried to cover my face as their animal frenzy continued.  There were just too many of them. The last thing I heard before blacking out was the crunch of my eye socket collapsing.

Better, but I wasn’t yet sure whether a dad crumpled on the ground bleeding was the right payoff.

Bill and I kept on walking.

Eventually the cops let all of us leave – no guns were found and the kids who had been fighting scattered the second they heard the sirens, but I found myself wondering,

What if “Knock it off!” had worked?

Can you imagine what a hero I would’ve been to my son?  What if the brawling teens had simply scattered at my booming voice, granite hard stare, and commanding body language?

After getting the surly punks to scatter, I turned back to see my son, mouth open, staring at me with awe and admiration.  As we walked back to the car I said, “Stupid kids.  I never wanna have to yell ‘knock it off!’ to you, boy, so mind your p’s and q’s.”  But I smiled.  Gabriel’s a good kid and he knows it.  I mussed his hair and said, “Okay, who wants burgers and shakes?” Gabriel and Cyrus both yelled out “me.” I took them to Big Ed’s #12, a local burger joint, where they ordered chili fries and chocolate shakes and would not shut up about how cool it was that I stood up to those thugs-in-training.  All the praise made me a little uncomfortable.  When they started telling strangers about it, I decided it was time to go.

As we pulled up to the house, I thought of another possibility.  Don’t get me wrong: this last rewrite was good – and moved the project forward, not just sideways - but I also had to admit, it was a little flat.  With the kids backing down, and me just walking away, the audience didn’t get the juicy brawl they wanted.

As I got out of the car, another concept came to me, and I got that electric feeling (half the trick with scripts – and life – is knowing whether the premise itself holds water.  If you falter there, no amount of spit polishing will save you).

Okay, what about this: the kids do kick the crap out of me?  Even then, Gabriel still probably would’ve seen me as a hero, a man risking his own hide to get involved while others wondered where the security guards were.  Handled well, “winning by losing” is more interesting than “winning by winning.”

Back at home, as his disapproving mother bandaged the cut over my eye and told Gabriel “See?  Fighting never solves anything,” Gabriel protested. “But mom, you should’ve seen dad.  It took three guys to bring him down!”  It hurt to talk, let alone breathe, so I just held my bruised ribs and said nothing.

My wife went upstairs to put Gabriel to bed.  I waited for her to come back down and deliver a lecture on recklessness and the need for more life insurance.

Sitting on the couch, I could hear her steps as she came down the stairs.

She walked up to me, reached out her hand, said nothing, and led me to our bedroom.  She shut the door.

“You’re not mad?” I asked.  She gently ran her fingers over my bruised ribs and let her panties slide to the floor.  “I take that as a ‘no?’” She smiled and gently kissed the cut over my eye.  It wasn’t the last thing she would kiss.  We explored each other like horny college freshmen on ecstasy and oyster juice.  I can report to you that my ribs weren’t the only part of me that was sore the next day.

Yeah.

I like that.

After her fourth climax, she asked for a ten minute breather.

Yeah, let’s lock that draft in.