Last Updated: 2023 Feb 18

Frozen Yogurt

“Not a cloud in the sky!” I said as I looked up.

The sun shone bright enough for my friend to bring her parasol today. We sat at the outdoor tables by the cafe with two cups of brightly colored frozen yogurt.

“Wait!” she said before I moved to take a scoop. “You gotta take a pic of our cups!”

“Right, I forgot.”

I really didn’t understand the trend. I took my phone out to take a picture. It clicked with the fake shutter of a real camera then I showed her the image it took.

“Gosh, you’re hopeless,” she said. “Your finger’s blocking the lens again. Let me do it.”

She then took out her phone, and in turn, it clicked.

“See?” she showed it to me. “I’ll text it for both of us.”

“Haha, yeah. You’re a way better photographer than I am.”

Even though we sat next to each other, with both of our phones out, we started silently browsing the web. Through scrolling text, just by the headlines and previews, the feeds were flooded by news of a gunman attacking a synagogue.

“Wow,” I said. “That town isn’t more than thirty miles away. Hell, the guy even has the same name as I do.”

I scrolled down further and saw that SJW guy again with his tweet cited by the news.

sjw1992, one hour ago
    The shooting was racially 
    motivated and carried out by a 
    white supremacist nazi 
    homophobe.

Just because the guy’s popular, he’s now a tipster for the news. I shook my head. If social media junkies of my generation were stereotyped to be tech addicts with short attention spans, hopelessly glued to the screen, then it said a lot about the journalists and reporters, who were over ten years older, that practically live on the feeds.

“That guy,” I muttered, “and his fake ass robot followers.”

“I don’t get it either,” she shrugged. “I never sign on there since there’s no real conversation to be had.”

---

“Bye!” she said from her car after she dropped me off at my house. “Let’s study for next exam sometime.”

“Yeah, later!” I waved off.

Not long after I stepped in from the door, I checked my phone for more news.

“The shooter carried out the attack with an AK-47,” an article stated.

“Who do they think they’re kidding,” I commented as the photo of a pistol loaded.

I kicked off my shoes and went over to my desktop. Not long after, I heard the rush of cars, humming engines outside my house, and rude pounding on the front door. I jabbed my phone’s screen as I walked back down to answer. The impatient knocker became increasingly forceful.

“God damn, what’s the rush—”

The next thing I saw was the whole front door falling over like the frame was totaled. The puff of disturbed dust from flaking wood, and down flat to a loud, painful bang on marble floors that trembled the air. A team of armed dudes in Kevlar, like they came straight out of a video game, were at the porch. Each one had a big white ‘SWAT’ emblazoned on their pouchy vests.

“Freeze!” an officer shouted.

“What! I didn’t do anything! It wasn’t me!” I held out my phone. “See! This is where I was at the time of the shooting!”

I tried to show them the picture of frozen yogurt I took at the cafe, but my finger blocked a portion of the photo, and my friend’s parasol looked enough like a rifle to the police.

“You’re under arrest,” he said.

The officer apprehended and pushed me out the door. Just as, I saw the others confiscating the lever action rifle in the house.

“Wait. Hey, that’s my dad’s Winchester!”

“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer butted the back of my head with an MP5.

At the end of the day, I ended up in detainment. After an interrogation and obvious attempts to get me to admit to a crime I didn’t do, I sat front of my dad from behind a glass pane.

“Boy,” my dad’s voice raised as he started to lecture. “What in the hell’s name do you think you were doing today.”

“I swear!” I reiterated my story. “I was at the cafe with Courtney this afternoon.”

It took a lot later for the department to find that the news got the whole story wrong. The sun sunk deep behind the horizon, and my ride home was silent. Not many would care about a nobody’s front door, but it definitely was the reason behind the sour mood at the family dinner table.

Author’s Note: I checked if a city would have to pay for property damage in the event of a police raid. It turns out they don’t.