So here I am, sick as a dog... a sick dog... leaving my class at the engineering building and heading back to the rest of campus, when I spot a very strange looking package by the sidewalk, behind a bus bench. There are three of them, cardboard boxes that are kinda just barely held together by string, and one of them is somewhat open. I can see inside to what appear to be some large cylindrical objects wrapped thickly in newspaper, and the newspaper's got some oily looking spots through it.
My bit of training says, essentially, presented with the same exact situation and objects, to respond with a nice firm "holy [insert expletive here]" and run away.
Here's how I could have killed a small part of a city by poor judgement, with the help of the Miami-Dade Police Department:
1. I immediately backed away and jaywalked the hell across the street from where the packages were and called the police on my cell phone. No, I didn't call 911; I called the police NON-EMERGENCY number, 305-4POLICE. Doofustastic.
2. The police failed to respond in the 20 minutes before I was on a bus and out of the area. Brilliant!
3. Right as I reported it, some guy wandering past walked right past the packages and started poking at them (hence why I ran the hell across the street). 5 minutes after I reported it, he had returned with a purloined shopping cart, and loaded the packages up in it, then walked off! (I watched this part from all the way across the intersection and behind a parked SUV. (They make good shrapnel deflectors.)
Had this actually been something like, say... a bomb... I would still be here typing this, probably, but there'd be a few people in interesting states of explodedness on the streets of Sweetwater right now.
I am officially going to tryy to stick with drawing very silly comics now, and not dealing with any possible improvised explosive device situations, mmkay? Comics don't get people blown up.
Ah well, an excellent way to start out the morning, isn't it?