I was walking home. I was sixteen. It was after midnight. I heard someone call my name. I turned around. Five fourteen year old girls were on their way from one party to another. They wanted me to come with them. They’d been drinking. I had not. A police car passed us before we got to the end of the street. One of the girls screamed, “pig.” He stopped and got out of the car.

I said, “be cool. I know him.” He shined his flashlight on us and asked what we were doing out so late. Cursing erupted from the girls. “None of your business, pig.” I told them to shut up. They didn’t listen.

“Okay, everyone in the car,” he said. The girls piled into the back seat. “You can sit up front with me.”

All of the girls were quiet except one during the ride to the police station. He asked their names and called each of their parents. Each father had his turn verbally attacking me. Every parent knows it’s always the boy’s fault. One father, the parent of the girl who started the problem and the only one who continued to berate the cop during the drive, wanted me jailed for corrupting his innocent daughter.

After the last girl had been picked up, the officer gave me a ride home, in the front seat. I apologized for the girls. He stopped the car in front of my house and said, “you’re getting older, Mike. You’d better watch out for bad girls. Sure, they’re a lot of fun. But they’re trouble too, a lot more trouble than their worth.”

It took a few years and a number of unpleasant experiences for me to learn that lesson.