You'll Be Fine

A few long years ago, I was working at a small optical shop, selling glasses, scheduling doctor's appointments, throwing out the garbage, and laughing behind the backs of customers with my boss.

Then I got this crazy idea into my head that I was going to become a cop. So I wrote my boss a letter saying that I was going to resign from my $10.55/hr job to enter a municipal police academy as a police officer candidate. I was surprised when he didn't tell me that I was fucking crazy, because that's what my parents told me. He put his hand on my shoulder and said how proud he was of me, which is just what I wanted to hear from my parents about this decision, but didn't. And then he said something that rubbed me the wrong way, even though I think it was meant as a compliment.

"You'll be fine," he said to me.

"Look, you know it doesn't really matter what happens to you in there-- if you make it or if you wash out. You're handsome, intelligent, well-spoken, ambitious-- and you're a white male. Opportunities are just going to fall into your lap. I mean, shit: they fell into mine."

And I guess they did, for him. He grew up dirt-poor in a trailer in a shitty part of New Jersey. His father died early and his mother, still living, is a trembling, alcoholic wreck. Miraculously, my boss survived a long-haired, drug-hazed adolescence filled with unprotected sex and behavior of a dubious nature at best. He bummed around life and held a series of odd jobs-- landscaping, construction, house painting, and being a traveling soda vendor. A friend approached him and suggested he ought to stop peddling suds and start peddling sunglasses, and so he became a rep for a recognizable sunglass line. Another friend suggested that he buy an optical shop and, when the opportunity presented itself, as it invariably does to all handsome, intelligent, well-spoken, ambitious white males, he did.

And, when he saw another handsome, intelligent, well-spoken, ambitious white male at the age of twenty come into his shop with a quick joke and a shaky handshake, well, I guess he decided to return the favor. Well, kind of. He started me at $6.50 an hour, and my first job was to soap, rinse and dust each one of the approximately 2,000 pair of glasses that surrounded the store. It took me the entirety of my first week of work.

I was annoyed by my boss's assumption that things would turn out okay for me because of the color of my skin, or because I knew how to comb my hair or because I used uncommon vocabulary words like "effecacious" and "remuneration" in daily conversation. Were any of these facts sturdy enough to act as a cushion or a safety-net against homelessness, mental illness, depletion of cash, unemployment, accidents, or the hopeless, unstoppable failure that radically alters so many a promising life?

As we all know, my good looks and charming personality were not enough to keep me enrolled in the police academy. I left after two days, forty-eight minutes-- despite an acceptable sit-and-reach score, and a blistering mile-and-a-half run time. I soon learned that my combed hair or my impressive vocabulary was no help when it came time to lift the barbell.

Neither of these elements of who I am stopped me from seven months of unemployment, and they didn't help me the first time I tried to pass the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's EMT Practical Examination. Fortunately, I passed on the second try, and that lead to a year and seven months on the street with a transport ambulance company, alternately freezing or sweating my ass off for $11.00/hr, transporting spindly, 90-pound cancer sufferers to hospitals and hospice centers, or schlepping around 400-pound gorillas to MRI appointments or up three flights of stairs. Or down. I can't remember which anymore.

Promotions at the ambulance company that seemed like they would be open to someone of my liberal arts qualities-- positions in management or supervision-- were routinely given to others with lower education levels, lower communication skills, and probably lower chromosomal quantities.

So I left.

After two years in my current desk-jockey job, I am emotionally exhausted, burned out and apathetic, and I am, at 29, finding myself once again at a cross-roads in my life where I am wondering if what my old boss once said to me will turn out to be true or false.

"You'll be fine."

I never put much stock into what he said, unless it was funny, and I'm not sure I believe him now. I want to, of course. But I think he might have been prejudiced, and it's hard to believe what tainted people say.

If he is to be believed, though, and if I understand him correctly, some tantalizing plum will kind of just... fall into my lap. I just hope that, if it does, it doesn't break my balls.

The Saturday Night Demons

My wife and I have a dirty little secret.

No, no-- don't get too excited. It doesn't involve water-based lubricants, unmarked DVDs, or mysteriously-stained tea-towels wedged in between our bed and the wall.

We watch COPS.

We don't do it every Saturday night, though. I mean, we're pretty cultured folks. We go to the opera and the theatre and folk music concerts-- sometimes we go out for dinner or take walks, but, when we happen to be at home on a Saturday night, say, after a fucking exhausting day of assembling eight foot tall bookshelves and schlepping forty-some-odd boxes of books downstairs to then fill the fucking bookshelves which have been sitting in a state of disassemblage for the past six months, well, sometimes you just want to flop down on the couch with some mango lemonade and watch some motherfuckers get tased.

Just like my wife didn't come into our relationship knowing anything about Herbie the Love Bug or Gilbert & Sullivan, she wasn't a COPS watcher before she met me. That's okay, I didn't know anything about baking or www.craftster.org before I met her either, and look at what a happy convert I've become.

I can't say why particularly my wife enjoys watching COPS. I know she gets excited and scared, she gets very adrenalized when there are high speed pursuits and dangerous take-downs of people who are obviously on hopped up on drugs. There is always a little bit of weirdness in the atmosphere when we watch COPS because, in 2003, I went to the police academy with every intention of becoming a police officer. I trained hard to get in shape for the rigorous physical tests, I ran at a local track every morning and I even visited with a physical trainer who gave me advice on how to "cheat" the bench press that I would eventually fail, resulting in my voluntarily leaving the academy.

Prior to that, though, I took written examinations for several police departments, and scored in the 99th percentile for one of the departments. I also, fearing the ridicule I knew I would face at the academy when the question "Has anybody in here never handled or fired a gun?" was asked and my gangly, scrawny arm would have to reach for the ceiling, took a private class where I learned all about gun safety. I got to disassemble and reassemble a 9mm Glock. I even took a fill-in-the-blank test on gun safety and the names of all the different pieces of the gun.

"True or False: Showering with your gun is a good way to keep it clean."

Just kidding, but it was kind of like that.

I always have very mixed emotions when I sit down to watch COPS. It's a bit like confronting my demons from the past. At 29, I know it is something I will never be. I made my decision, and that was that. I was close, but never that close. I went to an interview with a local sheriff's office wearing a gray three-piece suit, for Christ's sake. The sheriff, a female, didn't know exactly what to make of me. It didn't matter, they wouldn't hire anybody who hadn't been through the academy. What did I know? Some departments hire you first and then send you to the academy, some want you ready to hit the streets. None of them, I think, want you in a three-piece suit.

But I often think of what might have been. Like any job, of course, there would have been good days and bad days. One of the officers on COPS tonight, during the trite, 20 second soundbytes they run of them pontificating for the benefit of the cameraman and sound guy stuffed into the back of the patrol car said, "We use a team approach on our shift. It's the same guys all the time, and each of us has their own particular strengths." I wonder what they would have said about me. What would my particular strength be? Expecting and preparing for the worst? Maybe. More likely it would have been talking to people.

It's funny, because I really hate to talk to people. But, when I do it, when I have to solve a problem or resolve a conflict, I can cut through bullshit and be very direct, while still maintaining compassion and preserving someone else's dignity, even if I think they're full of shit. A suspect in a domestic dispute tonight on the show freaked out at his girlfriend because his one-year-old kid's shirt had a crease on it.

"I was in the navy, you know, so appearance, you know, how you look is really important to me," said the d-bag, who, by the way, had a lip-piercing.

The cop who dealt with him was huge, with a neck the size of an oak tree, and he spoke in a very short, clipped way, a gruff way, a mechanical, bored way. I was disappointed. I wanted to yell, "Put me in, Sarge! I want to talk to this guy."

Really. I wanted to really talk to him. I wanted to talk to him about his girlfriend, about his son, about life. About what really matters in life. I wanted to ask him what he does when his one-year-old son throws up on himself, or shits himself-- what does he do-- have sixteen new outfits for the kid to wear each day? Does he have a fucking fit every time Junior drools on himself? Life's too short, friend.

So much of law enforcement is about talking, and I think people forget that. All they see is takedowns and writing tickets, but it's mostly about talking. And that's what I wanted to do-- put on a uniform, get out there in a big, comfy car and talk to people. I wanted to do the thing I hate doing most, because I might not like it, but I am good at it.

But I have this blog instead.

Thanks for listening.

On Marriage

I haven't made nearly as many dumbfuck decisions as a married man as I did when I was single.

This could be attributed to the "two-heads-are-better-than-one" outlook, but I'm pretty sure there's more to it than that.

Marriage does a lot to temper idiocy, at least it does in my case. This is not to say that all the decisions I made pre-Mrs. Apron were to the left of retarded, but some of them certainly were.

I certainly never took a joyride in a SuperFresh shopping cart, nor have I ever tried to white water-raft naked, or intercourse a wall socket. But I've done dumb shit, like all dumbshits are wont to do.

Like that time I decided to enter the police academy-- yeah. That was obviously a pre-Mrs. Apron idea.

Not only was it not a mess of her own making, but, upon entering into a relationship and learning of this insane desire, she supported it, and me.

"This is who you are," she said.

(It wasn't really, though-- but we didn't know that at the time.)

I can remember going for a pre-academy run with my father at the track of my old high school, and he and I had a real heart-to-heart about my decision to become a police officer. His own objections were moot by this point, and he had long forsaken them and, instead, threw his support behind me-- helping me out at the track and at the gym-- even enlisting the help of a trainer who taught me a trick to "fake" the weight-lifting portion of the physical agility exam.

"Listen, mummy," he said, in between huffs and/or puffs, "you're living for two now." He was referencing my rapidly developing relationship with the future Mrs. Apron. "This isn't just you anymore. She's the one who's going to have to sit on her fuckin' ass and wait to see if you come home every night. She's the one who's gonna have to answer the door when it's the fuckin' priest or whatever if you get killed. This is something that you're gonna have to decide together, if you can do. You're two now."

He was right. When I made this decision, I was single. Now, as the start-date of the academy approached, I wasn't. I knew she was behind me and my decision, but I couldn't help but think, if I had started all this nonsense when we were together, would she think differently about it? And, whether she was on-board or not, was this a fair thing to put her through? To do to her?

It ended up not mattering a damn. I failed the weight-lifting portion of the physical agility test on the 2nd day of the academy. My ginglygangly armtwigs just couldn't lift that barbell, and no amount of "faking" it could raise that thing all the way. The commander called me into his office. He thought I should stay till the end. I left that day. It wasn't until long after Mrs. Apron & I said our wedding vows until the police ghosts came calling again.

Two months ago, I stumbled upon a notice that my hometown police department was hiring. This time, you had to get hired by them first, and then they would pay to put you through the police academy, as opposed to the ass-backwards way I tried to do it before, (pay to go through the academy, and then hope you get hired by a department). The salary was excellent, as were the benefits, and the probability of getting killed here is low, relatively speaking. I broached the topic with Mrs. Apron, summoning up all my bravery.

"You know," she said, "part of me wants to say, 'What the hell-- put in for it and see what happens...'" her voice trailed off. I imagined the second half of that sentence: "... and part of me wants to jab my fingernails into your jugular and stom on your fucking balls, you insane motherfuck."

I can't say I would have blamed her either. After all, I had just completed a Master of Education degree-- and the abandonment of such a valuable and, dare I say expensive degree would have been a questionable move. At the very least, it would have been a pre-Mrs. Apron move at best.

After all, we are two.

I met Mrs. Apron when I was twenty-three. From the time I was sixteen to the point where I met Mrs. Apron I had been the owner of seven cars:

1966 Volkswagen Beetle
1990 Ford Crown Victoria
1989 Volvo 240 DL
1994 Ford Taurus
1997 Ford Crown Victoria
2001 Chevrolet Impala
2001 Volkswagen Beetle

Call me fickle. When I met her, I was tooling around in the Beetle, which I had painstakingly painted and vinyl decaled in "53's" and red, white and blue stripes in honor of the best car in the world. I had to get rid of Herbie two years into our relationship because its reliability was basement-quality, and I could no longer afford the steep monthly payment coupled with the habitual repair bills. So I got a Ford Focus. It's predictable, boring and extremely reliable. Not only that, it gets 34mpg on the highway, and not terribly worse around town. The monthly payment isn't so bad, and it's actually kind of peppy if you've never driven a V-8 before. I've had it since brand new and now there's 65,000 miles on the clock and lots of bumper-stickers on its ass.

So, when I toyed briefly with the idea of getting rid of it for a fifteen-year-old used car to rid us of a monthly payment, Mrs. Apron rightfully freaked on me. Well, she didn't freak, but she rationally explained her objections and intelligently argued against my latest dumbfuck scheme, the development of which has not been totally ameliorated by marriage. Stunted, maybe. As I listened to her talk, I realized, "Wow-- you are saving me from myself."

And that, friends, is why marriage is better than Jesus.