You know it's a bad day when...

By Debra LoGuercio

My dear sister called the other morning, and she's busy, busy, busy, so the call came in the midst of her workout, done in true LA fashion: while walking her Chihuahuas and talking on her cell phone.

Rather than the usual update on her latest adventures in Botox, Sis was calling to let me know that, bottom line, she'd finally had it with Los Angeles. If I wanted a freebie weekend down south, I'd better do it fast. Upon first opportunity, she's relocating to the central coast.

Was it that one last temblor that got to her? The endless sea of parked cars on the way to work each morning? A flashing epiphany on the utter dearth of intellectual and spiritual substance in Southern California "culture"?

No, it was just your average, garden variety "bust" that takes place in Los Angeles about every seven minutes, but this time it happened in my sister's driveway. At gunpoint, no less.

Enough's enough. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Dorothy, it's time to click our heels and get the heck out of Oz.

My sister was quite troubled by what she saw that recent October morning, she told me. She opened her front door and discovered a woman holding a man at gunpoint on the ground. His face was pressed against the cold, hard concrete, arms and legs spread wide, and scattered all around him was the array of items that brought him to this moment of justice.

It was not a spray of baggies containing the purest Columbian cocaine, nor was it a stockpile of stolen handguns or a stash of counterfeit 20s that brought this criminal to the business end of a pistol, but an armload of sex toys. A wide selection of penis pumps, to be exact, as well as several rubber versions of the pumpable appendage in question (in a variety of sizes and colors), apparently to be used in the event that none of the pumps achieved the desired result.

It seems that not only was the unfortunate sex-toy snatcher so tortured by his apparently skimpy endowment that he was driven to rob a nearby adult toy store, but he did so just as an undercover police officer was driving by. "Tiny" didn't even sprint but a scant few blocks before that officer was all over him like stink on a monkey.

(You almost feel sorry for him, don't you?)

Before you know it, the LAPD squad cars arrived, lights flashing, sirens wailing, and the whole neighborhood was alerted to the fact that another dangerous dude was headed for the Big House. Roll the soundtrack: "Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do when they come for you..."

There, smack in the middle of this melee, was my poor sister, Chihuahuas a-yapping, merely trying to get out the door to go to work. One might think that once the baddie was safely stowed in the back seat of a squad car that Little Sister could simply have hopped into her spiffy silver convertible and headed down the road.

One must not think. It will only make one's head hurt.

Before she could back down the driveway, one of the officers held up his hand. Not so fast. The "evidence" was still there, and could not be disturbed until it was photographed. And he halted her not one moment too soon: one more inch and she'd have flattened a big, blue Jumbo Job under her wheel.

My sister appealed to the cop's sensibilities: Surely he didn't expect her to call her boss and tell him that a large, royal blue dildo made her late for work. She could already hear him screaming "Too much information!" Besides, the risk of being henceforth called "Smurfette" by snickering co-workers was just too great, should the circumstances of her tardiness leak out.

The officer, bless his heart, was sympathetic to her situation, and after carefully surveying the "evidence," managed to slowly guide her down the driveway without disturbing anything. (Careful! Watch out for the pink one! Hard left! Whew - almost squashed the Motion Lotion!)

Soon enough, things were under control. My sister made it to work on time, Tiny was safely behind bars, the Chihuahuas' rattled nerves were soothed and somewhere at the Los Angeles Police Department, a pile of Pumpmaster 2000s was being dumped onto the desk of a startled clerk. Yes, life was once again normal, if there is such a thing in LA.

The moral of this story, dear readers, is to be thankful for your own problems. No matter what sort of weirdness life tosses in your path today, there's someone out there who's having a worse day. Because you know it's a bad day when you find yourself face down at gunpoint loaded to the armpits with sexual enhancement aids. Particularly if you really needed them.

And if you actually ARE having a worse day than that, there's still consolation. At least my sister didn't tell your tale of woe to me so you could read about it in the newspaper.