Day 17: As Promised...

A good friend of mine and I made the decision to do Free Hugs outside the movie theater on Saturday night, and when I say that, what I really mean is, I made the decision to do Free Hugs, and David came along for the ride.

I only had one sign, so he took the cardboard back of a large pad of paper and made a sign that was far superior to mine. We got down to the coffee shop around seven in the evening, I got a cup of coffee, and we were off. On the walk to the theater I gave David the basic rundown, but even I didn't fully know what was going to happen because I knew that there was going to be a police officer there, and I've never done it at night. We got to the theater, sat down across the street and kind of scoped out what was going on. I drank my coffee, noticed the police car parked in front of the theater, but I couldn't smell doughnuts, so I was a little skeptical on his location. Eventually, we crossed the street and posted up. If facing the theater from outside, I was on the left, catching people after they bought their tickets and were on the way into the theater, and David took the opposite direction, catching people as they were walking in the area or over to the ticket booth. In the first half hour or so, until about 8:15, there was a surprising lack of people. There was a steady flow, but I had imagined there would've been more then what I was seeing. Right around 8:20 there was just a huge increase in people, whether it was people getting out of movies at the same time as people going into later movies or something else, I can't be sure. Alls I know is that there was a lot of hugging going on. So much hugging that I was really irritated when people started to want me to take time out of doing what makes me happy to talk to them about why I was doing it. That's right, you heard me. The god damn Hug-Questioners.

"Oh, how cute, is this for an Eagle Scout project?" I actually fucking laughed out loud at that one, I couldn't control myself, there was so much stupid being emitted from that sentence, it was like watching Cheech and Chong.
"No, ma'am" I replied "I'm an Atheist, and my friend is Ba'hai, we're doing this because we're bored on a Saturday night."

The hugfest was really happening, I got people who didn't want to give me a hug to give each other hugs, some little kid came up and hugged me, which is the first time that's happened in a while. It was in full-swing, and that's when I knew that I should be doing it at night more often, a lot more foot-traffic.

Then, it all kind of happened at once. Around 7:40 the piggy had made an appearance, really just letting us know that he was around, and he was doing patrols. Every ten or so minutes he would come outside and walk around a little bit, and then go back in. I knew what he was doing, he knew I knew. He was lurking. He was waiting for one of us to slip up and do something we shouldn't have, so he could kick us off the premises. I told myself that it was going to happen, and that me and David were totally cool, but alas, it happened. He came outside, and the smell of bacon was so over-powering that I almost plugged my nose at the aroma of the wonderfully tasty pork that was walking around in a police uniform outside the Maya. He looked right at me, pointed at me, and then looked at David, pointing at him.

Now, I'm pretty sure he said "You two, over here", but all I heard was "OINK OINK OINK. OINK, OINK OINK." and I saw him motioning me to where he was standing.
"I've been waiting for somebody to complain about you guys the whole time you've been here, and you see that guy over there? All the way down there, he just did. He's soliciting, but not on the theater's property, and he complained about you guys, so I'm going to have to ask you to move on down that way." He motioned towards the opposite side of the theater from the solicitor with his fat sausage link fingers.

Yeah, I could've argued with him, told him that we weren't soliciting, because we are giving something, not RECEIVING something, but it really wasn't worth it, and we walked down the street, hanging our heads in shame to society. Fucking cops.

-Bobby