Late for biology class

Treasure hunt gone wrong

Picture of the Helsinki Cathedral in Finland.

This will be a short one.

I think I have one of the best stories ever about being late to class.

When I was seventeen and on my last year of high school, I decided to organize a surprise party for a friend.

But I didn't want to just show up with him somewhere, so I decided to do a whole "treasure hunt" beforehand.

I started sending him messages from a different phone number with riddles and things like that, and once he'd solved them, I finally sent him a message with some coordinates and a date and time for him to be there.

This place wasn't where the party was going to happen. It was actually a roundabout, not too far from my school. The plan was to give him the last clue there, and that clue would then take him to the party.

I chose that spot because, besides it being convenient from the perspective of me having class, I could toss him a pen with the clue from above and set off running without him catching me. It was clearly me behind this whole thing, so the bigger worry wasn't that he'd find out who this was, but rather that he'd catch me.

The day finally arrived. I dressed in all black and put on a balaclava, which, despite being a bit out there, isn't that uncommon of an accessory to have in Finland, given how the winters are. As I was going to class later, I was also carrying a backpack with me, which happened to be black.

I arrived at the place and waited a while but my friend wasn't showing up.

Then suddenly I hear sirens and screams that seemed directed at me. I turned around and saw a bunch of armed cops coming my way screaming at me to get my hands up. There were two marked cars and one undercover, and they closed out the roundabout entirely in just a few seconds in order to get me.

It was then that I realized the stupidity of this whole thing. Not long ago, there had been attacks in both Paris and Stockholm, so a man dressed in all black with a balaclava and backpack was certain to raise some alarms.

As they approached me, I started explaining everything and opened my left hand to drop the pen with the clue, that I asked them to read.

They took me into the little cage at the back of the van, but quickly realized I was just a teenager who'd messed up, so they didn't even take me to jail. They parked at a nearby gas station and took down my personal details while I explained to them the whole story. I showed them all the text messages, both to the friend whose party we were organizing and to another friend who was sort of helping me plan, and eventually they just let me go.

Lucky me that I was in Finland, where police shoot something like four shots a year in the whole country, with three of them being warning shots. I might not have been so lucky elsewhere.

Plus my luck actually didn't stop there. On top of all of this, I also had a whiskey bottle in my backpack, which in Finland you have to be twenty to buy, and they just let me keep it no questions asked. I didn't even drink at the time, so the bottle wasn't even for me, but rather for my history teacher. It was his birthday and my parents got me this bottle so our class could gift it to him.

And so, back as a free man and with my whiskey bottle on my back, I headed to school like a responsible teen.

I arrived at biology class at like 9:15.

"Excuse me teacher, sorry I'm late, I was just arrested. You don't want to know under what suspicion."

Video above recorded by the friend whose party I was organizing. He arrived late and saw the commotion only to realize it was me who caused it.