Wednesday, November 23, 2005
Happy Thanksgiving!
Ah yes, the holiday season is upon us once again. I couldn't be happier. I love it. Always have. It brings out the little kid in me. Well, so does pretty much everything else for that matter. I got a Schoolboy Heart, what can I say? I was talking to my oldest son Mateo yesterday. He's a chef at a resort in Sun Lakes, where he prepares lovely dishes, primarily for the old farts seasoned citizens who live down there, like Big Bamboo. They're open tomorrow, but his boss didn't schedule Thanksgiving Day for the folks who have kids. So he'll be able to spend the holiday with family - especially Ladybug.
Glad to hear it, because I spent many of my three sproglets' early formative years working nights, weekends, and holidays - sometimes all three concurrently. For fourteen years, I was either fighting the Cold War for Uncle Sam or cruising around in a patrol car for my fair city. There's just nothing to compare to arresting some Billy Bob for plunkin' his ol' lady up the side o' the head with a mug of egg nog when she didn't put enough Jack Daniels in it. I even worked a homicide one Christmas morning, when a dickless bastard closed his own eight-year-old daughter up in a hide-a-bed and sat on it to "teach her a lesson." She suffocated.
As a city officer, we always had good-natured rivalries with other agencies and those lazy bastards over at the fire department:
Sleep, play with your hose, sleep, watch TV, sleep, shoot hoops, sleep some more, then pick up your paycheck and go home. What a life.
One Thanksgiving, some of the State Police Officer's wives decided to prepare them a big turkey dinner with all the trimmings: mashed taters, gravy, green beans, punkin pie, the works, and take it up to their station as a holiday treat for the squad. I get this call around noon:
134....Main Street near St Mary's hospital, 10-44
Damn! I was just getting ready to break for lunch, slide home, and get a little time with my family. But off I go to a traffic accident on the south side of town. It's the state guy's wife. A holiday drunk has pulled right out on front of her, and she obliged, broadsiding his dumb ass. Thankfully, no one is hurt. At least not physically, that is. But what the hell is that splattered all over the windshield? Ah yes, mashed potatoes. Isn't that a touch of cranberry sauce dripping from the rear view? The punkin pie looks lovely, ma'am, all smushed into the dashboard that way, and your hairdo is quite fetching, even with the gravy.
You'll never know how hard it was for me to work that accident at the scene with a straight face. No ma'am, I'm not laughing. That's an actual tear of sorrow, knowing that my brethren at State Police will be eating TV dinners.
Later that day, I was sitting in my patrol car writing a report when a citizen comes out of his house, walks over to my unit, wishes me a Happy Thanksgiving, and hands me a piece of punkin pie with whipped cream. Just my way of saying thanks, he says, to the folks who have to work today protecting the rest of us. He shook my hand and went back inside.
OK, so I guess working holidays wasn't always bad.
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Glad to hear it, because I spent many of my three sproglets' early formative years working nights, weekends, and holidays - sometimes all three concurrently. For fourteen years, I was either fighting the Cold War for Uncle Sam or cruising around in a patrol car for my fair city. There's just nothing to compare to arresting some Billy Bob for plunkin' his ol' lady up the side o' the head with a mug of egg nog when she didn't put enough Jack Daniels in it. I even worked a homicide one Christmas morning, when a dickless bastard closed his own eight-year-old daughter up in a hide-a-bed and sat on it to "teach her a lesson." She suffocated.
As a city officer, we always had good-natured rivalries with other agencies and those lazy bastards over at the fire department:
Sleep, play with your hose, sleep, watch TV, sleep, shoot hoops, sleep some more, then pick up your paycheck and go home. What a life.
One Thanksgiving, some of the State Police Officer's wives decided to prepare them a big turkey dinner with all the trimmings: mashed taters, gravy, green beans, punkin pie, the works, and take it up to their station as a holiday treat for the squad. I get this call around noon:
134....Main Street near St Mary's hospital, 10-44
Damn! I was just getting ready to break for lunch, slide home, and get a little time with my family. But off I go to a traffic accident on the south side of town. It's the state guy's wife. A holiday drunk has pulled right out on front of her, and she obliged, broadsiding his dumb ass. Thankfully, no one is hurt. At least not physically, that is. But what the hell is that splattered all over the windshield? Ah yes, mashed potatoes. Isn't that a touch of cranberry sauce dripping from the rear view? The punkin pie looks lovely, ma'am, all smushed into the dashboard that way, and your hairdo is quite fetching, even with the gravy.
You'll never know how hard it was for me to work that accident at the scene with a straight face. No ma'am, I'm not laughing. That's an actual tear of sorrow, knowing that my brethren at State Police will be eating TV dinners.
Later that day, I was sitting in my patrol car writing a report when a citizen comes out of his house, walks over to my unit, wishes me a Happy Thanksgiving, and hands me a piece of punkin pie with whipped cream. Just my way of saying thanks, he says, to the folks who have to work today protecting the rest of us. He shook my hand and went back inside.
OK, so I guess working holidays wasn't always bad.
