Arrest That Man!—You Didn’t Say That, Did You?

I was on the administrative staff of my dream job. One of my co-workers, named Melvin, was a Department Director, and we became good friends.

He physically was very similar to me, except he was 6 foot tall, and I was only 5 foot 8 inches. We both had booming voices that could be heard throughout the office, and we both had to work constantly to keep our voices low, especially if we were in a very sensitive private conversation.

He was an ex-marine, and looked and sounded tough, but I knew he was just a big teddy bear.

Life in our office could be rather stressful as our clients were always in a state of crisis. That meant our counselors could easily be overwhelmed with the stress. Both myself, and Melvin, tried to liven things up, and keep people laughing, to help relieve the stress. Because of that, the two of us were always playing practical jokes.

This was easy for us to do, as we both “thought alike”, “acted alike”, “sounded alike”, and could finish each other’s sentences. Our boss used to claim that the two of us were twins separated by birth. However, there was one problem with that. He is black and I am white. But even so, there seemed to be a lot of truth to the idea of us being twins separated by birth.

We even managed to have similar injuries in relatively the same time span. After one such injury to my leg, I had to go to physical therapy at a local clinic. Melvin had also injured his leg and was undergoing physical therapy too. What we didn’t know, was that we were both going to the same clinic.

One day as I was leaving the clinic, just exiting the main lobby doors, I spotted Melvin crossing the drop off drive on his way into the clinic.

Just then a local city policeman was arriving on foot at the main lobby doors. Simultaneously Melvin and I pointed at each other and exclaimed “arrest that man!” The startled policeman stopped in his tracks, looked at each of us, and just shook his head in unbelief, as we kept walking towards each other.

I wonder what the policeman really thought about the two of us. I wonder if he mumbled to himself “You didn’t really say that did you?”