I had a dream in which me and my buddy (both fictional characters) were walking in the middle of the street. A hummer owned by the cops was driving behind us and honking. Exasperated, we slowly moved out of the way. The cop then instructed us that we were under arrest and we should get in.

a) Obstructing traffic. $40 fine.

b) The cop had been beaten up in an (off-duty) bar fight. Shut up. He needs us to drive him to the doctor at the station.

So I’m driving and I’m complaining about the $40 fine. He’s like “Oh, you don’t like it, eh? All right. Then it’s a $200 fine for resisting arrest.” Jerk.

Eventually, I get pretty fed up with how I’m helping him out and he’s treating me like crap. “Y’know what?” I say, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to stop the car right now and you’re going to go to that clinic over there,” I indicate a normal-person clinic we happen to have been driving by – not the station doctor. “I’m perfectly within my rights to just walk away from here. And you know what you’re going to do? You’re just going to take it easy and settle down.”

“Yeah, all right,” he says. “I’m a reasonable guy. I can take it easy.”

“Really? Just take it easy?”

“Yeah. I’m a reasonable guy.”

“All right,” I say. I stop the car and grab the tickets that he had written out for me. I got out and he got out, and I was like. “I knew it. You’re just a regular bloke like me, right? You’re a cop, but you’re also just a blue-collar worker, right? So you understand. Fuck this shit, right?”

“Fuck this shit,” he agreed.

I tore the tickets up. “Fuck this shit,” I said. I offered my hand in a high-five. “Here’s to taking it easy,” I said.

“Taking it easy,” he said.

We high-fived. And then he kept on holding on to my hand. Something was awry. “Uh, what are you doing?” I said. And then the handcuff went on.

The next scene was me giving a motivational speech to some high schoolers.

“So,” I said. “Apparently, there’s ‘taking it easy’, which is a misdemeanor charge with community service. But I was lucky. He could’ve ‘taken it medium’, As in ‘medium security’.”

Wah-wah.