Nothing puts life in perspective faster than a trip down to the police station.
I make the drive a couple of times each week so I can compile enough information to fill the ‘Police and Fire? section on page 9A of The Clarkston News, and regardless of how my day is going or how many things have already gone wrong, I inevitably finish the task feeling thankful, blessed ? and very lucky.
Sorting through that stack of reports, I often find myself dumbfounded, shocked, angry or saddened by the things that people do.
A couple of weeks back I read about a workplace scuffle that developed when two employees disagreed over placement of the mouse for a computer they shared. The gentlemen traded a few ugly words before one of them stood up and launched his stool at the other. Before you knew it: Pow! Bang! Crash!
Over a mouse? Seriously?
I read about restaurant employees who called police when a jealous patron spit in his girlfriend’s face; a man annoyed by homeowner’s association rules drilled his neighbor’s tires full of screws and popped in a couple of nails for good measure; a father who didn’t want to pay for his child’s medical expenses burst into a doctor’s office and let loose a mouthful of obscenities while a group of wide-eyed preschoolers looked on.
To frost his own crummy cake, the man repeatedly questioned why people are always calling the police on him.
And then there are the reports about drunken and drugged-up drivers, idiots driving the wrong way down a one-way street, smashing into other cars, into trees and utility poles, into anything that gets in the way.
People also blame alcohol and drugs for causing them to abuse and neglect loved ones, rob, steal, vandalize, harass and run half-naked through the neighborhood clutching a bottle of vodka at noon.
But the reports with incidents labeled ‘family trouble? or ‘domestic violence? are the ones I feel the most. I read about boyfriends and husbands choking, threatening and berating the women they claim to love, and I read about abusive women who hit, kick, bite and throw childish tantrums.
The worst of it, easily, is reading reports about parents who call the police on their own adolescent children, almost always because the teen’s hateful, demanding, abusive and destructive behavior has blown out of control.
And this is why reading police reports leaves me feeling thankful, blessed and lucky.
I’ve been there. My daughter Christy had a rough ride through her teen years, and I know the terror and embarrassment of finally picking up the phone to call the police. But we were lucky — the right people walked into our lives at the right time and helped us find our way out of a dark, scary hole. It took four years of work, but we made it.
So now I read these reports and I remember where I’ve been, and I want to find these people, look them in the eye and say: Do something! It doesn’t have to be this way! Life can be so much better — if you’re willing to work for it.