It was meant to be a joke, but it transformed to trouble. One of my friends is a fan of President Obama so I thought it would be funny to fill up his yard with Mitt Romney signs. Doesn’t sound like a huge deal, right? There would be no damage when I used free cardboard and plastic signs. No big deal, my friend and I said. But that’s where stupidity entered.

The Republican headquarters wasn’t open so we thought it was okay to grab the signs from some local yards. This idea, yet foolish, was the best way to pull off this joke. Once we started it was working and we accumulated 20 signs. Here’s where problems started. My friend gets out to take 3 and we hear a slamming door sound… Then a loud truck engine fire up. At that moment, my heart started pounding. Next bright lights pull out behind me.

At that moment I knew our little plan was put to a halt. No matter where we drove the truck didn’t give up. After 50 minutes of a random chasing, they turned around and gave up. We looked at each other, took a deep breath, and smiled. But it was too early to celebrate. The next night the doorbell rang. At first I thought it was ding dong ditchers or something minimal like that but to my surprise it was 2 Pewaukee cops.
The first thing they said was “do you own a white ford explorer?”

At that point I knew exactly what was going on. They got my plate number. Since they knew it was me, I just admitted it and told them what happened. I then returned the signs to the cop. He was just going to warn me but the man demanded I get a ticket. The cop had no choice but to give me a ticket for 303 dollars for municipal theft. Yet my friend’s name didn’t even come up in the discussion. At that point I was furious at the man and at myself. 5 weeks later I had my court date. After I explained the judge what happened and why they agreed it wasn’t a huge deal. The ticket would be removed completely if I completed 20 hours of community service. When this option was given, I was thrilled and I agreed to that.

When my community service was all over and this problem with fixed, I realized how lucky I got. This whole thing taught me a good lesson. I needed to start acting more like an adult rather than a child. Overall, this experience turned out to benefit me.