I raised my hands and told the officers to arrest me instead of the kid sitting in that truck. I’m a fifty four year old biker with two felony convictions behind me. I had no real reason to step into the situation.

But sometimes your past shows up right in front of you, staring you down, and you don’t get the luxury of looking the other way. It happened at the corner of Fifth and Raymond. I was stopped at a red light on my Softail when flashing blue and red lights suddenly filled the intersection.

A pickup had been pulled over. An old Chevy. There was a kid behind the wheel, maybe sixteen years old.

His hands were raised and his mouth kept moving. Probably saying please. Or I didn’t do anything.

I’ve said those same words before. The officers pulled him out of the truck and started searching it. They opened the glove compartment and found something inside.

I couldn’t see exactly what it was from where I was sitting, but I saw the moment it hit the kid. Pure fear. The kind that tells you your life just fell apart.

The kid began crying. “Please. I’m borrowing my uncle’s truck.

I don’t know what’s in there.”

I stayed on my bike as the traffic light turned green. Cars behind me started honking. Thirty years earlier, I had been that kid.

I was fifteen, driving my cousin’s car because he asked me to move it. I got pulled over for a broken taillight. They searched the car and found pills under the seat.

They weren’t mine. I’d never even seen them before. It didn’t matter.

I spent eighteen months in juvenile detention. Then another two years after getting into trouble while I was locked up. It took me twenty years to rebuild my life after that.

I looked at this kid leaning against the truck, crying, and I could already see the next thirty years of his life. I pulled my motorcycle to the curb and walked toward the officers with my hands raised. “That’s mine,” I told them.

“Whatever you found in that truck belongs to me. I hid it there. The kid has nothing to do with it.”

They looked me over.

Leather vest. Prison tattoos. Exactly the kind of guy they’d believe a story like that about.

“You understand,” one officer said, “with prior felonies this could mean serious prison time.”

I glanced at the kid. He was shaking his head, trying to stop me. A complete stranger trying to save me from myself.

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