Suffer the Little Children

And then the little shits jumped in the pool all around me. 

Good God. Is it too much to ask for some placid pool time, a little floatitude, a few fucking moments bobbing in the blessed H2O without a gaggle of screaming, whining, splashing monster-misfits encroaching on my personal acreage? Around 1:00 today, after lunch with my darling friend, Lisa, I drove home in the box of hell that is my un-air-conditioned car, and by the time I pulled into the parking lot, which I swear was melting, I just wanted to take the Nestea ® plunge and divest myself of the sweat rivulets that felt downright felonious in certain crevices.

I scoped out the premises, and there was only one skinny bikini bitch out there. I rushed into my swimsuit if you can call the ambling of my fatass “rushing,” zapped out the hearing aids, and flip-flopped my way to the goods. Damn. In the time it took me to adjust the twins in their triangles and squeeze my ass into Spandex ®, three more slimsters claimed their spots around the pool. At least there were no children. And no Pool Nazi. That moniker belongs to the insane woman who lives upstairs in my building and who believes—because the apartment complex staff has allowed her to assume the responsibility of “pool monitor” so that they don’t actually have to do the job they’re paid to do— that she is the cock of the walk around here. She struts daily around the pool area, policing and annoying the bathers to be sure no one dares to break a rule; sometimes she just looks out over the land from her balcony since our building backs up to the pool area. But I digress. More about Beelzeboobs some other time.

Anyway. No children. That’s where I was. I know. I know. I’m a teacher, for heaven’s sake. How can I not love children? The truth is that I do love the tiny rascals, and I engage easily with the little motherfuckers. But sometimes, damn, I want a tot-free zone. Peace. Quiet. Thinking time. Is that too much to request? I thought not. So. I was relishing the absence of noise except for the Godforsaken tinnitus tones which are my constant companions, and enjoying the gentle buoyancy that supports my illusion that I am weightless and, therefore, worthy of love, when a dervish of neon shot past my periphery. Before my sluggish frontal lobe could even register the event, a horde of SPF-50-slathered small fry fell into the water around me like a human hail storm. And, God, the shrieking! Children can transmit a frequency known only to dogs and deaf women without their hearing aids and dolphins. Mother, it was loud. I can hear virtually nothing, even when folks yell directly into my ears. But even my sad excuses for sound organs picked up the alien pitches and delivered them to my auditory nerves, all proud like they’d done something. Well. Fuck you, ears. You never work when I want you to, like in the movies at all the funny parts. Who asked you to kick in now?

I tried to ignore the baby bombs as they landed and exploded in showers of fat drops and delighted squeals in my vicinity. But it was no use. My repose was over. I slogged out of the shallows, packed up my Kindle ®, my Coke Zero ®, and my Hawaiian Tropic ®, and trudged home. It was torture to leave all that sunlight behind. But the upside is that I know those kids’ lazyassed parents never follow the directions on the sunscreen label and reapply, especially after lengthy exposure to water. Perhaps there was burnage! Followed by crying and cool baths and aloe application, and Tylenol ® for the adults and Children’s Motrin ® for the charred kiddies and a glass of Chablis after the urchins finally shut the hell up and went to sleep.

And perhaps they won’t be back tomorrow.

Stoooopid

Unfortunately, the finger points to me.

At his office, my father always kept a cactus in a clay pot on which these words were merrily painted in sunny yellow: “Stupidity is frequently rewarded with intense pain.” I found it amazing and cool that people outside our home knew the phrase my father had coined—his secretary had gifted him with the cactus—and I prided myself on spending the bulk of my life proving the veracity of that prickly statement, living up to my father’s sentiment over and over and over again. For example, I once grabbed a cactus with both hands because it looked so furry and soft. Do you know how long it takes to tweezer millions of cacti spikes out of your hands, which are nearly paralyzed from the poison on every fucking one of those prickles? I do. I do. Over the years, I have gradually morphed into the poster child for massive fuck-ups. I’ve been so successful at screwing up that I deserve some kind of golden, naked statue.

Today, as I was driving home from my soul-sucking job, I almost drowned from reverse-snorting McDonald’s sweet tea out of my nose because I launched into a fit of uncontrolled mirth remembering one really dumbass thing I did last year. Yes, I know that dying that way would’ve been the ultimate irony. What ev. Let’s stay on the point, shall we? Here: I’ll share.

I spent a fall weekend in a large, southern metropolis at an educational conference, which consisted of going to interminable seminars conducted by hopped-up presenters— who used to be Chihuahuas in their previous lives— alllllll day for forty-eight hours with breaks for quail. Yes. Quail. Whoever catered the shindig obviously couldn’t spring for good old meaty chicken, so they served microscopic breasts that looked like those little plastic turkeys that come in a Barbie kitchen set. For every meal. Two tiny chews, and it was over. It’s no wonder that as soon as we were free for the night, teeming swarms of starving teachers spilled into the streets like ants when you turn a garden hose on their hill.

A co-worker, Trace, and I had a lead on Mexican restaurant, so we hunted until we found its location in an underground mall. Unfortunately, the entrance involved an escalator and a lot of construction mess. Yellow tape blocked off the stair case and the up-escalator, and the down-escalator was not running. My buddy and I started down the stationary metal steps, but I panicked. “Shit!” I hollered, stopping on the second step. “We can’t go down there.”

“Why not?” yelled back Trace, who’d already made it to the bottom.

“The up-escalator is broken,” I shouted. “How'll we get back up?”

What. The. Fuck.

Yeah, I said that.  The really, really frightening thing is that I still didn’t recognize my stupidity until Trace got over her shrieking outburst of laughing at my ass and pointed out that we could just walk back up the fucking steps on which I was standing.

Holy shit. I am a moron. I have no business shaping the minds of the future. If you cut open the skulls of all the students with whom I’ve had contact, their brains probably look like those horrible clay pinch pots that kindergartners bring home and force their parents to display and to pretend to love.

The only redeeming piece of the escalator-fuck-up-story is that there really wasn’t that intense pain that Daddy’s rejoinder promises. Aside from a little embarrassment and the realization that most of my brain cells have apparently mutinied, it was no big deal. No one’s ever died from embarrassment. I’ve come close, though. But that’s a subject for another post.

DON'T Call Me "Cute."

Unless a girl has shiny, pink cheek circles and pigtails, do not fucking call her "cute."

So the other day, one of my daughter’s young friends commented that I was “cute.” Oh, my holy mother, no she didn’t. I know exactly what she meant by that, and it sure as hell wasn’t “adorable” and “dainty.” The absolute last thing a woman of my advanced age wants to be called is “cute.” All right, there is at least one other “c” word that’s probably the #1 thing a woman never wants to be called, but “cute” still ranks up there. Cute is no longer an appropriate adjective for anyone with a double-digit age. What my offspring’s friend meant was, Your mom is kind of fat and round and tubby and jolly, and she says dirty words that make me feel all giggly and naughty, so I consider her a cross between Shrek and a farm animal with excess gas. THAT is what cute really means. It is clearly a pejorative employed when the judger feels superior to the judgee. Just like nice.

When I was in high school, my favorite English teacher set my class straight from the first day when she instructed us never, ever, ever to use the word nice again. Her point was that we better not write things like, “The book, Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, was nice. I thought the main character, Pip, was a nice guy. In my essay, I plan to tell you all of the nice qualities of the book and its nice main character.” Besides the fact that a student who writes like that obviously has limited growth beyond the brain stem, he/she will be responsible for his teacher’s suicide when—after reading that load of complete shit— she repeatedly smashes her head into the mint green cinderblock wall of the school, which needed renovating 40 years ago and smells like feet.

But, Mrs. S. was also trying to impart on her charges the realization that the word nice is so overused that it has become bland and meaningless. Much like Sheen. Both of those terms used to mean something positive, but now they’re just yadda-yadda-yadda fillers. If you are dating a guy whom all of your friends describe as nice, you should ditch him faster than the Democrats are cutting loose Weiner, and also probably find some new fucking friends who aren’t such bitches. Nice is as horrible a thing to say about a fellow as sweet.

Sweet, when it’s not used to mean (gag) “awesome,” is a designation whose translation when uttered by skinny, popular girls is roughly, Aw. Poor, fat guy who would love to get his plump sausage fingers near my panties, but who will never get laid in his life unless he drops sixty pounds, clears up that criminal acne and learns how to walk down the hall without releasing toxic bursts of assbreeze with each step. You all know as well as I that when you dared to thrust your yearbooks into the chilly hands of the “elite” back in school, that you got back pages and pages of inked messages like, “Your a nice girl who I will never forget.” And, “I hope we keep in touch. Stay sweet and cute!”  

If you were anything like I was, you sniggered at the stupidity of jocks and bow-heads who didn’t know how to spell you’re and who thought that who was the right relative pronoun to use in that sentence. You also probably said shit like, “Hold on. I can’t remember what Mark said he wanted,” while pretended to be ordering those three Whopper meals for other people in the Burger King drive-through on the way home. And you prayed for the day when someone, anyone—except for that drunk, smelly guy outside the 7-11—referred to you as “hot.” Unfortunately, you didn’t realize that by the time you’d finally earn that pinnacle of description it would only be when you were in the bowels of menopause, and your husband declared you “hot” because he wanted you to move to your side of the fucking bed and quit sweating all over him.

Tattoo YOU

This is called a gun for a fucking reason. 

Fucking needles are not my friend. How can something so elegant, so shiny, so small cause so much distress? And why, why, why would I agree to being repeatedly stabbed with one after the traumatic episode that should’ve taught me a lesson thirty-five years ago? Evidently, people do crazy, crazy things for love. Exhibit A: In sixth grade, after I’d triumphantly badgered my mother into submission, I got the green light for ear piercing. No other girl in the contiguous states still had virgin earlobes. Surely.

I desperately wanted off the loser side of the playground, so one summer evening I plopped down on a rigid cane back chair at my grandmother’s kitchen table and prepared to be punctured. By a brain surgeon. My Uncle Mack spent a total of twenty-four years in school to earn that distinction, and he was handy with a scalpel. I figured, shit, how much damage could he do with a needle? I vaguely remembered my mother’s shrieks of pain when her brother had pierced her ears with a syringe in our dining room a couple of years before; but it was because he’d sterilized the thing with a cigarette lighter, and it hadn’t cooled before he’d stabbed her. Still, a girl wants what a girl wants, and I convinced myself that this incising would be different. Boy howdy.

First, I barely made it through the “deadening of the lobes” with ice cubes. The left one hurt so fiercely that I refused to freeze the right one. Magnificent error. Turns out that Uncle Mack had only found an embroidery needle, and he had zero tolerance for whiners. He was used to sawing through people’s skulls, so he just jammed that pencil-sized needle right into my flesh. The agony was so fucking intense that all my sweat glands flung open, and the ensuing deluge flooded a three-mile radius; I hallucinated neon colors pulsing to the Fifth Dimension’s Aquarius, (feat. Tiny Tim); and I’m sure I blacked out and woke up addicted to crack in an alley a week later. Okay. Maybe I’m remembering that wrong. But, even the reality of those tiny surgical steel studs nestled in my swollen, violated earlobes did nothing to convince me to go near another sharp piece of metal ever, ever again.

So, what in the name of all things freaking holy was I doing in a tattoo shop last July? I am Episcopalian, for heaven’s sake. Lapsed, but still. Conservatives do not usually sport tattoos, but lately I have noticed an uptick in the number of folks who boldly display body art. Angelina Jolie seems to have ushered in a new era with her runes and tigers and Arabic. Oh, my. The Totally Stylin’ Tattoos Barbie got a lot of press because it comes with its own tattoo “gun” for your little ones to ink themselves. Even Germany’s first lady, Bettina Wulff, has tats. They must be cool. But the hip factor is not why I decided to endure being jabbed yet again. I did it for good, old-fashioned love.

Yes, yes. I have been married. And married. And married. Let’s not dwell. Still, I was shocked and awed to find myself entering into a new kind of relationship a few years ago. I felt—and still feel—giddy, protected, hopeful. I realized that a woman over 40 does not have to be in a Meryl Streep movie to find true love. At least once a day I gawk with naked adoration at this lovely man who has taken me just like I am. And I am no fucking picnic.

First, I’m deaf. That’s got to be crazy-making for any partner of mine. And, I wiggggg out when things go wrong, so I cop to being a LOT nutty. Plus, my complete package includes—God bless their precious, little hearts—an autistic, bipolar twenty-year-old and a surly high school senior who’s ninety-eight-point-three-percent out of the closet. Who would take this on? The man is special and deserves to be permanently honored on my flesh. So. Back to the needle.

As a 17^th birthday gift, I relented to my own daughter’s ceaseless badgering and agreed to let her have a rainbow sprinkle of stars painted on her hip. Kind of naughty in its hidden-ness, but it won’t lose her any job opportunities. I trucked her a couple of hours over from Georgia to Alabama, a state which allows the marking of under-aged skin as long as a parent is present. But I didn’t tell anyone that I planned to succumb to the needle myself. I envisioned a tiny version of my sweetheart’s signature in orange with a fuchsia heart. Tiny. On the inside of my second toe, where the thong of my flip-flops usually resides.

The tattoo place was really rather nice, the décor funky and clever; the bathroom offered reclaimed car parts as fixtures. The young woman who greeted us was gift-wrapped in reptiles and flowers and quotations. Most of her body piercings looked angry and painful. She listened intently to my daughter’s design desires, and then worked and reworked a computer image until she was satisfied with the aesthetic. She printed several sizes and pressed them against my daughter’s alabaster hip, and they finally agreed on the perfect fit.

I flipped through a local writer’s literary magazine and made myself at home on the cushy leather couch as the artist led my daughter through a black curtain down the hall. Three quarters of an hour later, my sweetie reappeared, flushed, drenched with perspiration, exhausted. She reported that the procedure hurt so much that she almost begged out, but she didn’t want half a rainbow. This, of course, put me immediately at ease. Still, I remembered that my daughter always overreacted to even the hint of pain. And my tattoo was much, much smaller. I figured, shit, how much damage could this girl do with a needle? I apparently have a crappyass memory.

I’d explained earlier to the young woman what I wished for in body art, and she’d examined my toe, which I’d awkwardly held up to the counter. So now I slid a folded piece of paper across the counter to her, and she scanned it, made a few adjustments, hit the print button and started the death march down the hall. I shuffled along behind her like I had soiled myself.

She helped me get situated on what looked like a kinky spa table, and then held a couple of rough drafts to the side of my toe. While she made a transferrable copy of the selected size, I lay back on the table and feigned nonchalance. The Garfield poster on the ceiling caused me think of a dentist who jammed long needles into the roof of my mouth once, so I felt just fricking awesome. The artist rubbed the transfer on my skin, and I looked over a collection of ink pots to choose my colors. She picked up a long, black instrument with a silver end and dipped it into the tangerine to fill some sort of chamber. I clenched everything I had in anticipation of pain and pulled an anus muscle I didn’t even know existed.

When she started the first letter, a surprising calmness settled through me. The needle actually felt good, sort of like a mini massage. I completely relaxed through the second letter and the third. And then she swooped up into the final character. Maybe all the nerves in that toe are bundled in that very spot because my right eye almost popped out, and I had to look with my squinty left eye to make sure she hadn’t just sliced off my fucking toe with a hot, jagged blade. I held absolutely still and forgot all about the direct bearing of breathing on my well-being. I vaguely remember the rinsing of the needle and chamber and the refilling of the fuchsia. I had requested a filled-in heart, but the branding of the outline nearly made my children motherless. “Oh,” I wheezed, “That really looks good just like that.”

“So, you don’t want it filled in?” she inquired, still holding the needle gun against my toe.

“No, no.” I never realized I could speak so quietly. “Looks great. More whimsical. Thanks. You heartless, ball-breaking bitch.” Okay. Maybe I didn't say that last part. It's the thought that counts.

The artist rubbed a dab of ointment on my tattoo and wrapped the wound with apparently a couple thousand motherfucking fire ants in soft white gauze. Then, I actually paid good money for the maiming and hobbled to the car. I glanced over at my daughter, lanky and beautiful on the reclining passenger seat. In her own tattoo-hell, she fussed and whined all the way home like I forgot to change her diaper. I thought about how precious she was as a toddler and how I longed for her tiny hand to be in mine again. Just long enough for me to break all her fucking fingers for suggesting this shit in the first place.

How to Humiliate Your Children for Fun and Payback

Shortly after this stage, children stop being angelic. Be prepared.

When I think about my children, I get all serious. My daughters were just the sweetest babies ever cut out by Cesarean. There was a time when I’d lose them momentarily in the mall or some other highly populated place but then find them before a lurking child molester could snatch them, and I’d experience the same combination of soul-searing terror/consummate relief as I did the other morning when I freaked out because I discovered I was a vampire and then realized I was holding my hand mirror backwards.

There was a time when I imagined I was the inimitable mother who’d cultivated the most mature, respectful parent-child relationship since Andy Taylor and Opie. There was a time when my daughters adored me, missed me when we were apart, tackled me like linebackers when we reunited.

But then came the inevitable time they hated me because they were teenagers, and I got all nostalgic. I imagined them sleeping—because that’s the only time teenagers are truly worthy of love—and a big lump formed in my throat. I wanted to scoop them up in my arms and hug them to my bosoms the way I used to when they were small enough to scoop up in my arms and hug them to my bosoms. Back when they didn’t talk yet and say things like, “I hate you.” But, unfortunately, children grow. (Unless you don’t feed them.) And they get so surly. It’s only fair that parents should have an arsenal of tactics available to even the emotional playing field.

One of the ways I humiliate my children in public is to point towards a pocket in my ginormous, embarrassing purse with my extended middle finger the way my grandmother used to because she didn’t know she was flipping the bird, and holler, “One of y’all hand me another battery, please. My hearing aid just died.” God, the kids hate that.

Another killer way I mortify my kids is to wear clothes that come from Wal-Mart, and then admit it loudly in front of their friends. I'll say something like, “Did you know that everything I have on—including my underwear, which was in a six-pack for five bucks—came from that new Super Wal-Mart they just built four miles from the old Wal-Mart?”

Here are some things you can try. Teenagers love it when you wear black nylon dress socks with sandals and shorts. So do that a lot. Especially if they demand that you take them to the mall. And then when you get there, and your children try to speed up to get away from you and pretend that they don’t know you, run after them, dragging one of your legs and shouting, “Come back! The doctors said not to leave me alone!” This is especially effective if you slur and drool.

By far the best way to knock your uppity kids back down a few notches is to have a sex life or the pretense of one. Children truly prefer to believe that they were delivered by the Vlasic pickle stork or maybe UPS. They get completely grossed out by the thought of their parents kissing or giggling conspiratorially. So. Wait until all their teenaged guests have arrived for a big birthday party, and then nudge your spouse playfully in the ribs and stage whisper, “Let’s head back to the bedroom and leave these folks alone, shall we?” Grabbing a chilled bottle of wine and a couple of glasses on the way out will make your children even more nauseated! Looking to disgrace your teenagers permanently? Banging the headboard rhythmically against the wall while producing loud farm animal sounds will do the trick.

You know, while we’re on the subject of parenting tips, I’ve noticed that parents of emotionally disturbed children really, really like it when—in the middle of their offspring’s atomic tantrum—other adults step forward and offer helpful suggestions for exactly how they would handle the situation if their son or daughter behaved that way in public. This kind of unsolicited advice is always welcome and never makes a mentally ill child’s parent want to poke out the consultant’s eyes with a pair of safety scissors.

Anyway. If you’re like me and every move you’ve made since your children were born has been carefully calculated with their best interests in mind, yet they still think your whole reason for existing is to ruin their lives, don’t despair. Next time one of your youngsters forgets that life is not a Disney Channel sitcom where all the adults are dumb fucks and the children are in charge, I’m sure you can embellish one of my kid-correcting examples to remind your darlings who’s the boss. Remember: It’s best to start early and to be relentless. Your kids’ll thank you for the inspiration one day when they have monsters of their own.

A Few Quick Thoughts on Dying

Fucking BASTARD.

                        I don’t want to achieve immortality through my work…I

                        want to achieve it through not dying.

                                                                                                Woody Allen

I’m with Woody. But statistics show that the average person, at some point in his or her life, will fucking die. Hefner is a sick, sick anomaly, and don’t even try to use that de Havilland woman from Gone with the Wind. She’s four hundred years old and has cankles the size of toddler torsos. She’s probably like my sixteen-year-old poodle and can’t see anything but halos of light, and she wanders around in ever-tightening circles looking for a good spot to pee; but Olivia could just go for God’s sake because she has on a Depends anyway. That’s not living. The only thing separating Miss Melly from death is embalming fluid.

Statistics also show that if you don’t make your final wishes explicitly known, you may find yourself buried in a Harley-Davison casket, forever clad in a dooky-brown three-piece leisure suit circa ’77. Is this your idea of eternal bliss?

You don’t want to think about your mortality, do you? Who does? But pretending that you don’t tuck that hemorrhoid back in every morning isn’t fooling anyone. You’re aging. Your ass is dropping faster than Rep. Weiner's credibility (and apparently his trousers), and you can safely conceal Little Debbies in the flab-flap that hangs over your waistband. Of course, just behind the happiness-Hoover of Age, Death lurks right around your corner like a child molester on a daycare playground, waiting, waiting to have you for its special pal. There’s nothing you can do, really, so why not accept the impending obliteration of all that is you, the final curtain, the living end? It’s not the end of the world.

Now isn’t the time to dwell on heaven or hell. Chances are you’ve already screwed up more than that dumbass Charlie Sheen, and we all know you don’t get a do-over. Plus. You’ve got much more pressing concerns: Burial or cremation? Open or closed casket? Funeral or memorial service? And with the exponential explosion in funeral technology, do you want your service on a remote thread with a 29-second delay so that your camo-clad relative over in Iraq or Afghanistan can “see” what a good job the mortician did on your make-up? Because, clearly, you’re going to have relatives over there for decades to come. See how much you have to do? Better get cracking.

When my grandmother died, she left instructions so detailed a Kardashian could follow them. My mother, on the other hand, knew when she was going and still didn’t plan a damned thing. “I’m going to die soon,” she told me one cheery Saturday morning. “My life insurance papers are on the desk in the guest room.”

            “I’m not listening,” I said, switching off my hearing aids, slamming my hands over my ears for extra blockage. “La la la la la.”

            A couple of months later, she sold her huge house and jammed sixty years of crap into a two-bedroom apartment. She was heartsick to have such a reversal of fortune in living quarters. “You’ll find somewhere better,” I promised.

            “I’m never leaving here except in a body bag,” she said. I wonder how she knew.

            The weekend before she died, she gave me a copy of her apartment key. That came in handy three days later when I found her dead, dead, dead body.

            She knew she was going, but she left all the afterlife decisions for someone else.

            You do not want to do this to your survivors.

It’s like you’re slapping them from beyond so hard that a couple of teeth loosen up.

Just suck it up and walk your sagging butt into the nearest funeral home and make your plans. By the way, all morticians really do have that murky green cast of a freshwater fish underbelly for a reason. Part of the initiation rite for the “exclusive club” of dead-handlers involves replacing their own body fluids with enough formaldehyde to manufacture three double-wides. So. That explains the clammy hands and dank earth breath too.

You can opt for cremation over traditional burial, but, honestly it’s going to run you close to $7000 either way. Down at the crematorium, you’ll be slipped into a 1600-degree retort until most of you has evaporated, and a cookie sheet of calcium white shards remains. Then, you’ll be ground into a fine dust in the pulverizer to comply with most state standards that cremated human pieces be no larger than 1/8 inch, which is frankly a size most of you never want associated with one of your body parts, now, is it? Before the baking, some wacky families still rent a casket for the whoever-came-up-with-it-is-a-sick-bastard “viewing.”

Whatever you decide, just make sure you let your near-and-dears know. Put it in writing. Be specific. Your family and friends will be operating through a soupy haze of shock and despair after your death and cannot be held accountable for their choices. You will have only yourself to blame if you spend eternity in shit-colored polyester.

Car 54, WHERE are You?

Five things you do NOT want to see in your rear-view mirror. And trust me. Speeding up to see if the pretty little lights will spin and flash faster is a horrible, horrible idea.

The best joke I’ve heard in a long time:

A child molester walks a six-year-old through the forest. The child tugs on the guy’s sleeve and says, “These woods are scary.”

“Tell me about it,” the molester replies. “And I’ve gotta walk back out of here alone.”

Which reminds me of my topic for today: Why the hell are cops NEVER where you need them to be? Why are there NOT woods police? That’s where most of the bad shit happens. You never see CSI teams digging up the sidewalk in downtown Chicago looking for a missing kid’s decomposing corpse. The crazy fuckers are in the woods, officers! Why aren’t YOU there?

And when I am on the interstate, where are YOU, coppers, when some asshole motorcyclist whizzes by at 100 mph, darting around cars like the lanes are the guy’s personal obstacle course? If you aren’t going to be there to nab jerks like that, then why can’t I have the authority to pop some of those little spike strips in the road so that justice can be done? You sure are right there the second I’m going 67 in a 35, aren’t you?? Yeah. I thought so.

Police spend too much time harassing hookers and probably doing some “field research” while they’re at it. And rounding up drug pushers and addicts isn’t saving anybody from being kidnapped and sexually molested and killed either. Plus, cops have a much better chance of being shot if they spend their time collaring deranged druggies. Imagine how much safer we’d all feel if the police prowled the backwoods or parked on the off-ramp from I-475 to Eisenhower Parkway in Macon, GA, where fuckers run that stupid red light every day. The coinage from tickets at that light alone could support the entire Bibb County Sherrif’s Department. And can’t you just picture the utter surprise on some son-of-a-bitching molester/murderer’s fugly mug if cops in camo slid out from behind the trees in the thicket or hopped up from foliage in the field that the asshole thought was isolated? 20/20 could do a new series. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate the fact that we have a police force, especially not a military police force like in some fricking frightening countries. I love law and order. I love knowing that if I dial 911, eventually a cruiser will appear unless I am black and poor and live in the ghetto. And, I applaud the officers out there who DO risk their lives every day (or night) at work to make the world a better place just like teachers and convenience store clerks. But until there are cops in every crawl space, law enforcement in all the lowlands, flatfoots in every field, detectives in every dark alley, badges in the backwoods, and county-mounties at that off-ramp in Macon, then I will never feel completely secure.