100-Year-Old North Carolina Woman Wanted One Thing For Birthday — To Go To Jail

Most people are happy with a freshly baked cake and a few cards to celebrate their birthday, but a North Carolinian centenarian got a very specific wish granted on her special day: She went to jail.

Ruth Bryant, 100, was celebrating her birthday Wednesday at her assisted living community in Roxboro, North Carolina when sheriff's deputies Tevin Dixon and R.D. Weaver arrived to serve her a warrant for "indecent exposure," the Courier-Times reported. Her friends and her family who gathered for her birthday had no idea what was about to happen, according to video from local news outlet WRAL.

Even Bryant's daughter, Marian Oakley, was apparently out of the loop on what was going to happen. "I know that she is a hundred years old, but I didn't know ... they'd be going this far," she told WRAL, briefly startled by a police siren.

Of course, Bryant herself was in on the gag but played along in the role of uncooperative suspect — as officers handcuffed Bryant to her walker, she put up a racket about her "arrest," even telling one deputy that the man "was getting on my last nerve." She also kicked at her "arresting" officer as she was being loaded into the police cruiser.

"Don't kick me; I've got a bad knee!" said the deputy, according to WRAL.

"I've got two bad knees!" Bryant is heard replying.

During the ride over to the jail, she even suggested to the officers that they should be arresting whoever designed the seats in the police cruiser. 

"The people who make these low damn seats in all these cars," Bryant said, according to the Courier-Times, "You ought to arrest every one of them."

Soon they arrived at the jail, where she was treated like any other suspected criminal, though perhaps in better spirits than the usual detainee. She had a mugshot taken, spent a few minutes in a jail cell, and received an orange shirt with the words “PERSON COUNTY JAIL," the Associated Press reported.

“I’m in the jail-house now! I finally got here!” she exclaimed, doing a little jig to display her joy.

After paying bail in the form of a hug to the chief jailer, Bryant was back on the streets. She finished out her 100th birthday in a more expected way: surrounded by friends, family and loved ones at her home and enjoying some celebratory cake, WRAL reported.