Andy Rooney Angry

My wife is over there at the sewing table leafing through a catalog of kid toys. There's a two page spread of fire truck/construction vehicle toys and there's boys playing with said toys. On the next page, there's a two page spread of fairy wings and kitchen sets, and there's girls playing with said toys.

Surprised? I'm not. Indignant? Not me.

I don't know what has come over me lately, but I don't care-- about a startlingly high number of things that, maybe, one day, would have got me outraged enough to... um.... I don't know. Write a blog post?

I used to be what might be called an A.Y.M. (Angry Young Man). I got really hot and pissy at the drop of a hat, and I'd write A.A.L.'s (Angry Ass Letters). I'd sit at the computer and pound out a fire-breathing letter to a company, an organization, an editor. My letters were often answered, or published-- I guess my words aren't so easy to toss in a bin or insert in a shredder, and maybe I take some amount of comfort or pride in that. I like my words. My words with friends.

These days, it takes a lot to get me A.R.A. (Andy Rooney Angry). Maybe I'm more mature, maybe I'm more depressed, maybe I'm more consumed and more draggin' the wagon. More... tired. Maybe I've realized that getting angry only raises my pulse and my blood pressure. Generally speaking, my anger does very little for and to other people, it hasn't created much social change or more world order.

My anger got a plaque replaced on the Ben Franklin Boulevard-- but that was years ago. In 1970, a police sergeant named Frank Von Colln was talking on the phone at a small guard house when someone burst through the door and shot and killed him. Von Colln's holster was empty-- his revolver cold and useless inside his desk drawer.

Years later, a small park on the Ben Franklin was dedicated to him, and a wooden plaque was erected proclaiming that this small patch of ground with a ball field was to be known as Von Colln Memorial Park. But the years hadn't been kind and it had fallen into disrepair, it was falling apart. Maybe it had been vandalized, or just weathered-- I don't know. Still, the end result was the same: the sign looked like shit, and wasn't exactly a fitting tribute to the man whose name was etched into the wood.

So, I wrote a letter-- I think it was to the director of the Philly parks & rec department. I tore him a new asshole, ripped into him for allowing such a sacrosanct thing to go to hell, though I'm sure even this guy had never even heard of Von Colln Memorial Park. For good measure, I searched through newspaper archives and found a photograph of Von Colln, lying on the floor by his desk, riddled with bullet holes, the telephone receiver beside his body, and I paper-clipped the picture to my letter. A little gratuitous-- maybe. Three weeks later, I received a letter of apology (Apology? To me? Who the hell was I?) and a couple months later, there was a new, beautiful sign up. Money well spent.

Years earlier, while I was still in college and had just published a book honoring fallen police officers, I was on the phone with the daughter of slain NYC Patrolman Waverly Jones. Jones and his partner, Joseph Piagentini were killed on May 21, 1971 as they walked back to their patrol car together after answering an unfounded call at a housing complex in Harlem. Jones, black, was shot from behind four times and killed instantly. His white partner was mercilessly tortured as he lived through being shot thirteen times. He died on the way to the hospital. Jones's daughter, now a grown woman, told me that there were two trees planted outside the 32nd Precinct to honor her father and his partner, and that her father's tree and plaque had fallen into disrepair, while Piagentini's was clean and beautiful.

So, I picked up the phone and called the Precinct commander. Miraculously, the desk sergeant transferred the call and the commander picked up. I told him who I'd just spoken to and what she'd said, and I shared how disappointed she and I were in the department-- adding that the inequality with which the memorials to these two men were being treated smacked of the very racism that a black-and-white patrol partnership in Harlem in the 1970s was trying to betray. I said that the "New York Daily News" would probably be very interested in covering that angle of the story, should they happen to hear about it from someone.

A few months later, I was invited to a re-dedication of the trees and plaques. Both patrolmen's families were invited, there would be pipers, and a Catholic police chaplain would be there to bless the trees and the plaques, I was told. I declined the invitation, probably because I was still Andy Rooney Angry.

Looking back on who I was, I miss being angry, because it got things done. It strikes me that this post might strike you as self-congratulatory but, it's not-- it's just a bit of story-telling of a bygone era in my life, when I was different-- wound up and pissed off. Nowadays, it seems like everyone's getting angry-- it's suddenly fashionable when, ten years ago, I felt like I was doing that dance by myself. With Facebook, though, people get angry and they make a status update, they post a link to a polarizing article, they sign an online petition by clicking a box, they say something snarky about a Republican candidate in a sweater vest. If they're REALLY angry, they'll change their Profile Picture.

And I get it-- we don't have time to get all panty-twisted about every injustice in the world. Brad Pitt can't build affordable housing everywhere. If we spent all our time activisting, who'd wash the dishes and feed the marmoset? But maybe we can do more, if we really care. And, if we don't really care, why pretend? Because we want to look good for our "friends"? Maybe we should wait until we're Andy Rooney Angry, or risk looking disingenuous, or H.C.P. (Holden Caulfield Phony).

Sometimes I wish I was still an Angry Young Man. But usually I don't. It's just too damn hard.

For What It's Worth

*** This post is dedicated to the memory of Poughkeepsie City Police Officer John Falcone, and to "Scribbler."***

The Stephen Stills song "For What It's Worth" starts like this:

"There's something happening here
And what it is ain't exactly clear
There's a man with a gun over there"

It's the beginning of one of America's most popular songs to have come out of the sixties. On its face, though, it could very easily be the set-up for a call that goes out over police radios thousands of times every year in this country.

"Unknown trouble."

"Man with a gun."

"Shots fired."

And off they go. Off they go.

On Friday, February 18th, Poughkeepsie City Officer John Falcone received a "shots fired" call over his radio. He was just a block away. The call was hot, as they say. He keyed his mic, indicated that he was responding, and he gunned the engine of his radio car. What he saw when he pulled up at the scene was a man waving a handgun. This scenario would present the responding officer, an eighteen-year veteran, with quite a challenge-- possibly the challenge of his career. How do you deal with an armed man? You draw on him from behind the safety of your door (that hopefully has a ballistic panel) and you command him to drop the weapon.

Sounds simple enough, right? But there's a little wrinkle with this particular event. See, the suspect in question has a gun in one hand, and a three-year-old child in the other.

When he sees Officer Falcone, he turns and runs. Falcone gives chase. It is procedure. It is instinct. It. is. heroism.

It would have been a heroic act even if Falcone had not been shot dead by the suspect. Sadly, though, he was, which is why it made the news. The officer died, but not before wrestling the child out of the suspect's arms, and handing the child over to a bystander. He then engaged the suspect in a struggle for his weapon, a struggle that ended in Officer Falcone being shot in the head, and the suspect, as they so often do, taking his own life. The original shots fired call was prompted when the suspect shot his estranged wife in the head, also killing her.

Officer Falcone's parents will now have to stand by as thousands of police officers from across the country bury their 44-year-old son. It isn't supposed to be that way. This three-year-old child will have to grow up and learn the tragedy that culminated in such a stinging bloodbath on a Poughkeepsie street one Friday afternoon. It isn't supposed to be that way.

When I listen to people who content themselves with criticizing "The Police," as if they're criticizing some homogeneous, corporate entity like "McDonalds" or "Rent-a-Center," I cannot help but get my back up. Maybe it's because I'm older than they are. Maybe it's because I have stood in my EMT uniform, a black band across my badge, and saluted the lifeless body of a Philadelphia Police Officer shot in the head for no reason other than that some shithead with nothing more to lose decided to John Wayne his way out of one more spot of trouble. Maybe it's because I've seen widows, barely old enough to be married, stumble out of churches sobbing hysterically on the shoulders of their fathers, bewildered at how their lives are falling apart just as they've begun.

Maybe it's because I'm a privileged, wealthy, caucasian whose mind has been successfully infiltrated by left-wing mass media and right-wing propaganda. Or is it right-wing media and left-wing propaganda?

Meh.

Maybe it's because I see a middle-aged man risking everything to save the life of a three-year-old child. Maybe it's because they see a cog in the wheel of corruption and oppression doing his job like the governmental tool that he is, the occasional good deed amidst a thousand pilfers from the evidence locker, the roughing up of suspects, the planting of dime-bags in the pockets of baggy jeans, the perjuries and the abuses.

If you've read the posts in this blog for any number of weeks, you know that you are reading the words of a cop wannabee. I tried. Oh, God, did I try. I hit the gym. I lifted weights. I was at the firing range-- unloading .22s and .38s at target after target. And I got pretty good, too. I ran my lungs out at the track. I trained. I tried.

But it wasn't enough.

I couldn't lift that barbell with 83% of my bodyweight on it, and that's the sad truth, because we're not talking about a lot of weight to begin with. I didn't do so hot on the written tests either. The FBI rejected me after I answered a long series of questions about situational judgment and my belief-structures, which, apparently, do not align themselves with a successful career in law enforcement.

The funny thing is-- in the job I do now, I do something very police-like, and I never really thought about it until just now. I'll be standing in the chart room at the hospital, joking around with a nurse or a doctor, and, cutting through the air, is the alarm that sounds when somebody pushes the panic bell.

There is trouble.

I'll let loose an automatic expletive and dash out the door, along with my coworkers, towards the trouble. It could be a patient in medical distress. It could be an assault or a suicide attempt in progress. Whatever it is, somebody thought it was emergent enough to summon help. And I go, because, when the bell goes off, somebody is in trouble and needs help. Plain and simple.

"You don't have to answer the bell, you know-- there's paperwork to do. There's other people here to answer it," my supervisor said to me once a couple months ago. I laughed in her face.

"And if everybody said that to themselves when the bell went off, nobody'd answer it," I retorted. "When that bell goes-- I go."

Because, in this life, there are the people who need help, the people who answer that call, and those who offer either support or critique. And maybe my tendency to offer support makes me naive or manipulated, and, if that's the case, I very much prefer it that way.

For what it's worth.