Sylvester Going it Straight


Sylvester Going it Straight

It was Earl’s 30th birthday and he planned to get drunk. Yes, he did and at the end of the night, he drove himself home.

Then the police pulled him over and they tried to make him walk a straight line but he failed at that. Earl went on to fail the breathalyzer test as well. To add to his woe, the authorities brought him back to the police station and demanded he be the subject of a no-contact strip search.

Sylvester Going it Straight - cop-with-batonEarl was no small man either. He was 6 foot 5, round-bodied and he even prided himself on having enormous man boobs. Be that as it may, five police officers witnessed this procedure. This is how it went:
“Sylvester,” cried one of the cops, using Earl’s birth name. “Sylvester, stand up!”
Earl stumbled to his feet. “Sylvester, take off your shirt!” The drunken man removed his upper garments.
“Sylvester, sit down!” Earl took a seat.
“Sylvester, stand up!” continued the demands. He stood.
“Sylvester, take off your pants.” Their prisoner complied.
“Sylvester, sit down.” The inebriated man did what he was told.
“Sylvester, stand up!” Earl rose again.
“Sylvester, take off your underwear.”

With that demand, the intoxicated man began to argue. “Oh, this is what this is all about!” he refused the authorities with all the rage he could muster. “Is this some kind of cheap thrill! This is how you cops get your kicks?! This I will NEVER do! EVER!”

On and on Earl complained but the authorities maintained their argument that they were only doing their duty. Well, the birthday boy’s undies did come down. Yes, the alcohol stymied his sense of shame. However, there was one problem. Earl struggled to remove the wayward undies from his feet area. In fact, in such a drunken stupor, the undies unexpectedly were positioned into a slingshot position. All five police officers did not move at all and behind a door, a female officer gave everyone their privacy.

At such an hour, it did not take long for the underwear to take on a life of its own, go space-bound, and land on a cop’s face. Earl was horrified, a subsequent commotion caused the female officer to race into the room, just in time to see Sylvester the Cat naked and him getting charged with assaulting a police officer with his underwear. All five officers had witnessed this horror and affront to Canadian Law. So Earl spent three weeks in Toronto’s West End Detention Center. In fact, he claimed his cellmate was a former hitman who had killed four people in Kensington Market in the mid-1990s.

At this juncture, the killer had mellowed and now offered Earl candy at the obscene hour of the night. So Sylvester’s court appearance was around the corner. It so happened Ear had a friend I am calling Ned, who had gone to law school, passed his bar exams, but eschewed the life of a lawyer in favor of working as a local handyman in the west side of Toronto, where he had grown up. Thus, Ned represented Earl at such a terrible hour. Yes, the five police officers came forward, claiming to have witnessed the assault. Yes, Ned helped Earl in the court system. So the judge sentenced Earl, causing him to lose his car license for a period of time. When Earl explained this part of the story, everything got garbled.

All I know is that he was required to move back with his mother and have her act as his guardian. “So let me explain this to you,” Earl would say. “A very 30-year-old man has to move back with his mother, have a curfew, and be with her.” To add to his debacle, Earl’s mother is from China and he is obviously a single Caucasian, white male, all leading to cultural clashes with the older generation. So the luckless man had community service, one year’s probation, and a rule about no alcohol. Lastly, because of the charges, he also required to meet with his probation officer. “And they wonder why the system doesn’t make someone criminal,” he would argue.

So Earl moved back home, lived with his mother, the very parent that had christened him with the name Sylvester. One year of peace followed. On the night he turned age 31, Earl went out to party. Yes, he got very drunk, stayed out until the bar had closed. This time he took a cab home. He never remembered the cab ride home at all, stumbling into his home. To his surprise, he met a lone police detective. What had happened?! When Earl had missed his court-appointed curfew, his mother got worried, called the police, and now at age 31, he was again arrested and spent another three weeks in Toronto’s West Detention Center.

Earl begged me to write this story. It has been several years since I have last seen this infamous Sylvester character. FYI, his circumstance proves that anybody can become a criminal. I can’t imagine giving the police too much power. This can happen to anyone and anywhere.

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