LAFAYETTE, IN — A one-minute, 38-second video by Tippecanoe County Sheriff’s deputies went viral with a little help from “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live.”
“A sheriff’s officer in Indiana went into an elementary school to jokingly hand out tickets to students using the phrase ‘6 7,'” “Weekend Update” anchor Colin Jost said during Saturday’s broadcast. “Everyone had a good laugh. Then he pulled out his gun and said, ‘Now tell me what it means.’”
Shortly after that joke, Sheriff Bob Goldsmith’s phone started received texts about the national attention. And the video, which was published Thursday, went viral.
“The whole thing behind it wasn’t to go viral,” Goldsmith said Monday morning about the video, which had 560,000 views by then. “It was just to do something funny locally with the kids. The young lady who gets ticket, we had a whole slew of kids who wanted to get the ticket.”
The video features school resource officers Beth Frazier and Steve Stonerock walking through Hersey Elementary School and handing out “tickets” to students using the term “6 7.”
It’s a way to engage the community and have fun, Goldsmith said, noting they plan to do more things like this.
At one point in the video, Stonerock and Frazier walked past a classroom door and hear a student say “6 7.” They interrupted the class, and Frazier handed the girl a ticket.
“It’s now against the law to use the words ‘6 7’ unless using it in a math problem or someone’s age,” Frazier told the girl.
Thursday’s video posted on the sheriff’s department Facebook page spurred a girl to walk up to Goldsmith and his family while they were eating at a restaurant on Friday and say, “6 7.”
“We all died laughing. It was hilarious,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of the comments have been positive.”
But not all of the feedback has been encouraging.
Some media reports have headlines such as “Sheriff issuing tickets for saying ‘6 7,'” but they buried the news that the video was a joke until the end, leading readers who don’t read to the end of a report or humor-impaired video viewers to rail against the video, Goldsmith said.
A man from North Carolina emailed Goldsmith complaining that he needed to learn about the Bill of Rights, specifically, the First Amendment.
Goldsmith called the man on Monday. By the end of the conversation, the North Carolina man said the media had done him a disservice by putting a sensational headline on the story while hiding the fact that it was a joke at the bottom of the story, Goldsmith said.
As for the second part of Jost’s joke on SNL about the meaning of “6 7,” Goldsmith still isn’t quite sure what it means.
He knows the phrase “6 7” is pronounced by drawing out the word seven, while at the same time, moving one’s hands up and down as if they were scales.
But what does it mean?
“What I’m being told is, it’s nothing,” he said. “It can mean anything.
“It just drives adults nuts.”
Reach Ron Wilkins at rwilkins@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @RonWilkins2.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Sheriff’s parody video ticketing students for saying ‘6 7’ goes viral after ‘SNL’ appearance
Reporting by Ron Wilkins, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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