"That's Officer bin Laden Lover to You, Pal!"

[Ken] Hill said he told the security guard who told him to take down the flag that someone with the Tampa Sports Authority told him ... that he could hang it there.

I did pretty much the same thing.

When I was an undergraduate here, an officer stopped me and asked me where I thought I was going with that, "that," being a DTH dispenser. It was after 2:00 a.m., I had been binge drinking, and taking it back to the dorm to use as a stereo cabinet sounded like a good idea at the time. I told the officer, a man in a suit told me I could have it. He told me to put it back and go home; so, I did.

Over the course of the next four years, that was standard operating procedure. I would do something borderline illegal, in most cases, poorly-conceived, and, more often than not, stupid, like running a "No War in El Salvador" flag up the Naval ROTC's flagpole, playing flashlight tag in the graduate library after hours, or breaking into the stadium for a night game of football with my suite mates--something along the line of hijinks. The police would stop me. I would say I had the permission of some authority figure. And they would say, "Oh, you and your monkeyshines. Now, cut that out and run along, you little scamp (or words to that effect)."

Unlike this guy and his co-conspirators, I never got arrested, never got expelled, and never got Taser-ed, because unlike Mr. Hill, here, back then, I knew when the gig was up; I knew when The Man could have been busting my ass, but was cutting me a break instead; I knew when to wink back and get lost.

Unfortunately, I don't know any of that anymore, but what I do know is, if you go around calling police officers "Officer bin Laden," misfortune will follow in your wake. You can bet the rent money on that.