My son and I arrived at the Sammamish Commons and walked around among the booths, enjoying the ambience of the evening.

Thousands of people were there. We walked down the steps and found ourselves a nice spot among the dandelions and dry grass and set up to wait for the fireworks.

It was a nice evening. My son got up to buy an ice cream. I lounged in the grass.

“Sir! Do you have booze in that bottle? What is in that bottle, sir?”

He had come up from behind. I hadn’t seen him. I looked over at my apple juice. Boy, did my juice look guilty. There he was, pee-colored, sitting in his Trader Joes clear plastic bottle, limp and half-consumed beside me.

“It’s apple juice, sir.”

The juice had warmed in the last two hours. Perhaps it had fermented. Perhaps I was guilty.

“Can I smell it please?”

“Yes, sir.” He was a sir even though he was half my age.

The fellow lawn lounges behind me gathered.

Sniff. Sniff. Sigh. He sat down beside me. He knew the scene he had caused. He looked at me and said, “I hate being the bad guy telling people to pour out their booze.”

“Well thank you for leaving me with my apple juice. It’s all I’ve got tonight.”

I could see that out of the last 6 apple-juicers, my bottle was the only one that had passed the test.

The officer had every reason to single me out — middle-aged, relaxing, funny-looking liquid in my container.

I failed to sense his embarrassment. And I failed to offer my handshake for his efforts and to show those behind us that even though he had misjudged, I was happy he was doing his job.

My cousin was a police officer. At least until the day when he had to deal with the fellow who claimed to be Jesus Christ, naked, at 375 lbs, high on amphetamines. Or the time that a fellow officer was caught by the druggies, and they had a syringe full of battery acid, and…

My cousin went back to being a mechanic, working on cars.

Folks, the Sammamish police force did an upstanding job at the Fourth of July event. They should be congratulated for their efforts. The small things we see in public aren’t half of what they go through on a shift.

My hat is off to all police officers.

Phil Breuser

Issaquah