Just my luck

When I was 15 years old, I was waiting outside a gas station for a friend to pick me up. The neighborhood that I was in was a known drug area and I was the only white person around.

On this particular night, I had nothing illegal on me and I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

While I was waiting, I saw a man come out of the gas station with a brand new pack of cigarettes. I walked up to the man and asked him for a cigarette. He reached into his pocket and pulled a pack out with two cigarettes left in it and gave them to me. (The guy looked like he smoked crack.)

I went back to the curb I was sitting on and smoked a cigarette. Right about the time I finished it, a cop pulled up to me and asked how I was doing, and I told him I was fine. He asked me what I was doing standing there and I told him I was waiting to be picked up by a friend. Then he asked me if I had anything illegal on me, and I told him that the only things in my pockets were a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

He asked to search me and because I didn’t have anything on me, I said sure. He patted me down and pulled out the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and reached in it and pulled out of it a small bag of cocaine.

He asked me about it and I told him that the man standing on the other side of the street gave me the pack and he must have left it in there. So the cop went and asked the man if he gave me the cigarettes and the man admitted to the cop that he did give them to me not even 5 – 10 minutes ago. Even with the man saying he gave me the pack, I still went to jail. That other guy got to go home and probably smoke crack.

Even though I’m pretty sure the cocaine belonged to the guy that gave me the cigarettes, I can’t help but wonder if the cop planted it on me.