“You know, Carla, I don’t think I’ve been to an elementary school since I graduated from the fifth grade. Also, I’ve never actually sat in the FRONT seat of a police car.”
“It’s probably a little scarier than how you remember it.”
“The police car? No way. It’s much better on this side of the cage. I’m a little disappointed though that you don’t have the twelve gauge up here for me to caress.”
“Not the car, Sheldon. Elementary school. The kids are pretty grown up.”
“The only thing I remember about elementary school is that the last drinking fountain in a row of four always produced pee; no cuts, no butts, no coconuts; and girls went to Jupiter for some reason. Oh, and I won a couple spelling bees.”
“You nerd! I bet you read books for fun.”
“Sure. I also played Dungeons & Dragons. I made little origami animals out of construction paper. Teachers loved me when I wasn’t intentionally or unintentionally making them feel stupid.”
“You’d probably have a tough time relating to the group of kids we’ll be talking to then.”
“I’m not so sure. I was considered a bit of hellion—literally. Jesus was a pretty big deal where I grew up, and my mamma wasn’t the church-going type. A lot of the other parents thought we worshipped satan. If these kids are demons, then they’re brothers and sisters of mine. God, it was great to have the neighbors think I was spooky without having to go full-on goth.”
“I did the goth thing a little bit in junior high.”
“No fucking way. From goth to cop—that’s a great story. How did you end up a cop?”
“I always wanted to be one. My brother and I used to watch Hunter religiously when we were kids. I wanted to be Dee Dee McCall so bad.”
“Yeah, it’s a little different from TV, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, they sort of leave out the boring stuff on TV. You know, I was actually a police explorer in high school. I used to go into liquor stores to buy booze, and we’d bust the ones that didn’t card.”
“So you were the one ruining everyone’s fun. For shame!”
“You know how kids get when they’re drunk-- adults too for that matter. Bad things can happen.”
“Yep. They grow up to be me.”
“Now that’s scary.”
We continued along the freeway in the Crown Vic heading eastward through the city towards our ultimate destination in Boyle Heights while a spattering of numerically coded conversations came through the radio. A little part of me was hoping Carla would answer an urgent request for back up, putting me right in the middle of a cop show shootout. That would add some serious flavor to an already eventful day. Unfortunately, we arrived at the elementary school without incident.
I felt like a retired NBA backup center as I walked the school grounds. I could easily dunk on the basketball hoops that were set well below the regulation ten feet. All the door knobs were just a little lower than normal. I could barely squeeze my knees under the lunch tables. I was a giant.
The drinking fountains were at about knee level. I tested the fourth in row of fountains, and, “Surprise!” It was water. The second one did taste a little like tea, or was it a gustatory hallucination. I wondered how ubiquitous that “coffee, tea, soda pop, pee” chant was back in my day. We recited the chant at each and every four-spigot drinking fountain. It was mandatory. I wondered if the kids were still using it today. Who the hell came up with that phrase anyway? This was definitely something to look into. I could imagine the bafflement of drinking fountain plumbers across the country as they encountered one four-spigot fountain after another: “The third one is always shot to hell, but the fourth one is always like new, completely untouched. I’ll just swap the third and the fourth and save the school district some money.” I could remember lining up to get to the third one. A few desperately thirsty kids would hit the first and second for an imaginary caffeine jolt, but no one ever touched the fourth. I did one time, and I was ostracized for a couple weeks. Hell, I knew it was water, and I pled my case as much as I could to my fellow second graders: “Does the fluid out of the third spigot taste anything like soda pop? No, you numbskulls.” But when it came down to it in the end, it wasn’t worth the silent treatment. I avoided the fourth spigot after that. I bet they don’t even make the four spigot models anymore to save tomorrow’s kids from humiliation.
Carla and I finally stepped into the fourth grade class, and I was shocked. Carla built it up like we’d be walking into an early scene out of Dangerous Minds or Stand and Deliver or To Sir, with Love or one of those movies where the protagonist teacher faces a class of seemingly hopeless hoodlums. These kids were no different than the ones I remembered when I was in the fourth grade. They were right before that age when they really start to care about what they’re wearing and how they do their hair. They were right before that age when they start to become assholes like the rest of us. I didn’t see any kids wearing shirts that read, “Fuck tha police.” In fact, these kids took an instant liking to Officer Diaz. She had this smile that the kids and I just couldn’t get enough of. If you asked me then, “Gin or Carla’s smile,” I’d take Carla’s smile without hesitation at that particular moment. It was genuine. I could tell she enjoyed being with the kids.
A few of the students recognized me from seeing my mug on TV, so I became known as Sheldon, the TV guy. I actually felt a little bad for being somewhat of a distraction, but I got over it quickly as I always do.
Carla opened up her talk with a little exposition on the LAPD’s motto, “To protect and to serve”. She basically painted the rosiest picture possible of the department—the ideal version of the LAPD. The police were the good guys. They protected the community (the kids) from the bad guys. The police worked for the community since the community indirectly paid the police through tax dollars. I know, it sounds like a mafia. I wouldn’t be the first to say all governments are mafias. In Carla’s words with her hand on her heart, she adopted all the kids in the classroom, “You are my family. Ustedes son mi familia.” She meant it. The kids ate that line up like it was a plate of chocolate cake and ice cream.
Carla didn’t drag the speech out too long, having to deal with fourth grade level attention spans. She had little work papers for the kids to fill out with a list of moral/statutory questions. Each question briefly described an activity. The kids were to write down and discuss why the activity was right or wrong. Most of the kids seemed to be getting it until we got to a question about graffiti.
“Okay, amigos. Spray painting or writing on walls out on your neighborhood streets—who thinks this is okay to do? Who thinks it’s okay for me to write my name on the front of the school?”
A couple of the boys raised their hands.
“Okay, Hector, tell us why you think it’s okay.”
“Well, it’s not hurting nobody. Nobody gets killed, and it’s not stealing.”
“Do you know anyone who tags, Hector?”
“Well, my brother got arrested, and he had to do community service, but he says it wasn’t really fair because he didn’t hurt nobody.”
“Where did he tag?”
“It was a wall on the freeway.”
“Well, Hector, first off, he was on the freeway with very fast moving traffic. He could’ve been hit by a car or a truck. I would hate for that to happen to your brother. Secondly, the freeway belongs to everyone. Everyone pitches in a little money to build the freeway, so we all own the freeway and the walls on the freeway that keep the noise out of our neighborhoods. How many of you write your name on your toys and jackets and folders and books so that you know they are yours?”
Most of the class raised their hands.
“It’s okay to write your name on the stuff you own, but Hector, your brother wrote his name on a wall that he shares with the whole city. Because we all own the wall, he should have checked first with everyone if it was okay to put his name on the wall. He didn’t ask permission. Most people in the city don’t like it when people write on public property. They’ve made it illegal to tag because most people don’t like the way it looks. It’s vandalism. It damages the property. If your brother is artistic and tagging is how he expresses himself, he should find some paper or a canvas or a wall in his own backyard to paint.”
I knew I was supposed be observing, but I felt like helping Hector out a little. “Hey, Hector, if your brother thinks the law is silly, he really should work on trying to repeal the law. If he can convince a majority of lawmakers that tagging isn’t so bad, then we can all tag all over the place to our hearts’ content. Tell him, best of luck with that.”
Carla flashed me a stern look.
“Sorry. Have they had government yet? They probably don’t get that until high school.”
We continued down the list of scenarios, and I have to say I was impressed by how articulate some of the fourth graders were. They were a lot sharper than I thought they would be. A few of them stumbled magnificently, but on the whole, Officer Diaz was bringing out the best in them. I struggled immensely to keep quiet during the drug-related discussions. Carla finally reached the point in her mini-class where she solicited questions. The first one was a doozy from little Marisol in the second row.
“Officer Diaz, is Sheldon, the TV guy, your boyfriend?”
The kids giggled and oohed.
“Well, he is my friend, and he is boy, pero el no es mi novio.”
The laughing children focused their gazes on me. I feigned a painful yearning look and turned the classroom into a telenovela.
“No puedo mentir. Ella es mi amor. ¡Yo te quiero, Officer Diaz!”
The kids lost all control at that point. Their laughter was the opposite of kryptonite. I couldn’t get enough. I was riding high. Then Carla brought be back down. She had her hand on her gun, wide-eyed, with an exasperated grin.
“Don’t make me kick you out.”
“Lo siento. Just kidding. Only kidding,” I said as I held up my hands. You don’t want to mess with a woman when she has a Springfield 40 strapped to her hip.
Carla handily answered many more questions, but the last question of the day was also a doozy. It came from a gordito in the fourth row.
“Officer Diaz, have you ever shot anyone?”
Carla paused a little longer than I thought she should have.
“I never have, and I hope I never have to. We only resort to violent force when lives are in danger to protect ourselves and other innocent people around us. It’s the last thing I’d ever want to do.”
Not wanting to end on a somber chord, Carla pulled out a goodie bag full of police badge stickers and activity books. The kids were grateful, and Mrs. Ybarra, the teacher, was grateful for the time off from babysitting. I was grateful for not having to sit through another one of Dean’s oral dissertations. If all Mondays involved putting the screws to your old employer in the morning and making fourth graders laugh in the afternoon, they wouldn’t have such a bum rap.
“You were lying about not shooting anyone. Am I right? I know I’m right.”
“Some of those kids might grow up to be cops, and I don’t want them to think it’s all about shooting people. I’m trying to weed out the sociopaths if you don’t mind. We have a few already I think.”
“Yeah, I’ve probably met some of them. I can see why they send you instead of some of the WWE rejects I’ve come across.”
“A lot of those super buff cops are really just big teddy bears, and the kids love them. They’re like superheroes. You have to be a super villain to fear those lovable hunks. Is that you, Sheldon?”
“I’ll admit I wasn’t always a responsible partier in my younger days, and on more than one occasion, I’ve had the knee of some behemoth in blue drilling into my spine. And I’ll admit, I probably had it coming. But my super villain days are definitely over.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
We were driving back towards the Pacific, and Carla’s aviators were two intense glowing orbs of sky blue fire protecting a couple drops of smooth dark chocolate. If all cops looked like her, crime would be out of control. We’d all want to be cuffed and carted off for interrogation.
“You think you can handle a bunch of high school kids on your own, Sheldon?”
“I’ve got a few ideas. I have a feeling I’ll either be a huge hit, or I’ll be seeing lawsuits from the parents of emotionally scarred teenagers.”
“You were a teenager once. Just put yourself in their shoes, and you’ll know what to say.”
“I was ‘A’ teenager. There are so many different ways to be a teenager. I’d take fourth graders over teenagers any day.”
“Stay away from my fourth graders. I almost had to use deadly force back there to keep your mouth closed.”
“We all had a lot of fun, didn’t we? Great job by the way. I was impressed. You won over the crowd. I can see why Nell would like you. How did you guys hook up anyway?”
“Doing the community outreach stuff is one of my favorite things about my job. There is so much negative energy with my job, it’s nice to bring in a little of the positive. I love talking to groups of people, and I’m pretty good at it. I didn’t know I’d like it until I started doing it. Then I started thinking, if I like doing this so much, I should try to do it more. So I tracked down Nell. Do what you love, right?”
“Yep. Do it until someone stops you with the force of a signed agreement and the funding of a multinational conglomerate. Then you have to find something else that you love doing.”
“If you love pissing people off, that’s probably not a good thing.”
“It can be fun, but it is very expensive.”
Carla dropped me off at my place while many of my neighbors wondered why and how I was able to employ Los Angeles’ finest taxi service.
“I’ll see you around, Sheldon. Take care.”
“Ditto.”
“It’s probably a little scarier than how you remember it.”
“The police car? No way. It’s much better on this side of the cage. I’m a little disappointed though that you don’t have the twelve gauge up here for me to caress.”
“Not the car, Sheldon. Elementary school. The kids are pretty grown up.”
“The only thing I remember about elementary school is that the last drinking fountain in a row of four always produced pee; no cuts, no butts, no coconuts; and girls went to Jupiter for some reason. Oh, and I won a couple spelling bees.”
“You nerd! I bet you read books for fun.”
“Sure. I also played Dungeons & Dragons. I made little origami animals out of construction paper. Teachers loved me when I wasn’t intentionally or unintentionally making them feel stupid.”
“You’d probably have a tough time relating to the group of kids we’ll be talking to then.”
“I’m not so sure. I was considered a bit of hellion—literally. Jesus was a pretty big deal where I grew up, and my mamma wasn’t the church-going type. A lot of the other parents thought we worshipped satan. If these kids are demons, then they’re brothers and sisters of mine. God, it was great to have the neighbors think I was spooky without having to go full-on goth.”
“I did the goth thing a little bit in junior high.”
“No fucking way. From goth to cop—that’s a great story. How did you end up a cop?”
“I always wanted to be one. My brother and I used to watch Hunter religiously when we were kids. I wanted to be Dee Dee McCall so bad.”
“Yeah, it’s a little different from TV, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, they sort of leave out the boring stuff on TV. You know, I was actually a police explorer in high school. I used to go into liquor stores to buy booze, and we’d bust the ones that didn’t card.”
“So you were the one ruining everyone’s fun. For shame!”
“You know how kids get when they’re drunk-- adults too for that matter. Bad things can happen.”
“Yep. They grow up to be me.”
“Now that’s scary.”
We continued along the freeway in the Crown Vic heading eastward through the city towards our ultimate destination in Boyle Heights while a spattering of numerically coded conversations came through the radio. A little part of me was hoping Carla would answer an urgent request for back up, putting me right in the middle of a cop show shootout. That would add some serious flavor to an already eventful day. Unfortunately, we arrived at the elementary school without incident.
---
I felt like a retired NBA backup center as I walked the school grounds. I could easily dunk on the basketball hoops that were set well below the regulation ten feet. All the door knobs were just a little lower than normal. I could barely squeeze my knees under the lunch tables. I was a giant.
The drinking fountains were at about knee level. I tested the fourth in row of fountains, and, “Surprise!” It was water. The second one did taste a little like tea, or was it a gustatory hallucination. I wondered how ubiquitous that “coffee, tea, soda pop, pee” chant was back in my day. We recited the chant at each and every four-spigot drinking fountain. It was mandatory. I wondered if the kids were still using it today. Who the hell came up with that phrase anyway? This was definitely something to look into. I could imagine the bafflement of drinking fountain plumbers across the country as they encountered one four-spigot fountain after another: “The third one is always shot to hell, but the fourth one is always like new, completely untouched. I’ll just swap the third and the fourth and save the school district some money.” I could remember lining up to get to the third one. A few desperately thirsty kids would hit the first and second for an imaginary caffeine jolt, but no one ever touched the fourth. I did one time, and I was ostracized for a couple weeks. Hell, I knew it was water, and I pled my case as much as I could to my fellow second graders: “Does the fluid out of the third spigot taste anything like soda pop? No, you numbskulls.” But when it came down to it in the end, it wasn’t worth the silent treatment. I avoided the fourth spigot after that. I bet they don’t even make the four spigot models anymore to save tomorrow’s kids from humiliation.
Carla and I finally stepped into the fourth grade class, and I was shocked. Carla built it up like we’d be walking into an early scene out of Dangerous Minds or Stand and Deliver or To Sir, with Love or one of those movies where the protagonist teacher faces a class of seemingly hopeless hoodlums. These kids were no different than the ones I remembered when I was in the fourth grade. They were right before that age when they really start to care about what they’re wearing and how they do their hair. They were right before that age when they start to become assholes like the rest of us. I didn’t see any kids wearing shirts that read, “Fuck tha police.” In fact, these kids took an instant liking to Officer Diaz. She had this smile that the kids and I just couldn’t get enough of. If you asked me then, “Gin or Carla’s smile,” I’d take Carla’s smile without hesitation at that particular moment. It was genuine. I could tell she enjoyed being with the kids.
A few of the students recognized me from seeing my mug on TV, so I became known as Sheldon, the TV guy. I actually felt a little bad for being somewhat of a distraction, but I got over it quickly as I always do.
Carla opened up her talk with a little exposition on the LAPD’s motto, “To protect and to serve”. She basically painted the rosiest picture possible of the department—the ideal version of the LAPD. The police were the good guys. They protected the community (the kids) from the bad guys. The police worked for the community since the community indirectly paid the police through tax dollars. I know, it sounds like a mafia. I wouldn’t be the first to say all governments are mafias. In Carla’s words with her hand on her heart, she adopted all the kids in the classroom, “You are my family. Ustedes son mi familia.” She meant it. The kids ate that line up like it was a plate of chocolate cake and ice cream.
Carla didn’t drag the speech out too long, having to deal with fourth grade level attention spans. She had little work papers for the kids to fill out with a list of moral/statutory questions. Each question briefly described an activity. The kids were to write down and discuss why the activity was right or wrong. Most of the kids seemed to be getting it until we got to a question about graffiti.
“Okay, amigos. Spray painting or writing on walls out on your neighborhood streets—who thinks this is okay to do? Who thinks it’s okay for me to write my name on the front of the school?”
A couple of the boys raised their hands.
“Okay, Hector, tell us why you think it’s okay.”
“Well, it’s not hurting nobody. Nobody gets killed, and it’s not stealing.”
“Do you know anyone who tags, Hector?”
“Well, my brother got arrested, and he had to do community service, but he says it wasn’t really fair because he didn’t hurt nobody.”
“Where did he tag?”
“It was a wall on the freeway.”
“Well, Hector, first off, he was on the freeway with very fast moving traffic. He could’ve been hit by a car or a truck. I would hate for that to happen to your brother. Secondly, the freeway belongs to everyone. Everyone pitches in a little money to build the freeway, so we all own the freeway and the walls on the freeway that keep the noise out of our neighborhoods. How many of you write your name on your toys and jackets and folders and books so that you know they are yours?”
Most of the class raised their hands.
“It’s okay to write your name on the stuff you own, but Hector, your brother wrote his name on a wall that he shares with the whole city. Because we all own the wall, he should have checked first with everyone if it was okay to put his name on the wall. He didn’t ask permission. Most people in the city don’t like it when people write on public property. They’ve made it illegal to tag because most people don’t like the way it looks. It’s vandalism. It damages the property. If your brother is artistic and tagging is how he expresses himself, he should find some paper or a canvas or a wall in his own backyard to paint.”
I knew I was supposed be observing, but I felt like helping Hector out a little. “Hey, Hector, if your brother thinks the law is silly, he really should work on trying to repeal the law. If he can convince a majority of lawmakers that tagging isn’t so bad, then we can all tag all over the place to our hearts’ content. Tell him, best of luck with that.”
Carla flashed me a stern look.
“Sorry. Have they had government yet? They probably don’t get that until high school.”
We continued down the list of scenarios, and I have to say I was impressed by how articulate some of the fourth graders were. They were a lot sharper than I thought they would be. A few of them stumbled magnificently, but on the whole, Officer Diaz was bringing out the best in them. I struggled immensely to keep quiet during the drug-related discussions. Carla finally reached the point in her mini-class where she solicited questions. The first one was a doozy from little Marisol in the second row.
“Officer Diaz, is Sheldon, the TV guy, your boyfriend?”
The kids giggled and oohed.
“Well, he is my friend, and he is boy, pero el no es mi novio.”
The laughing children focused their gazes on me. I feigned a painful yearning look and turned the classroom into a telenovela.
“No puedo mentir. Ella es mi amor. ¡Yo te quiero, Officer Diaz!”
The kids lost all control at that point. Their laughter was the opposite of kryptonite. I couldn’t get enough. I was riding high. Then Carla brought be back down. She had her hand on her gun, wide-eyed, with an exasperated grin.
“Don’t make me kick you out.”
“Lo siento. Just kidding. Only kidding,” I said as I held up my hands. You don’t want to mess with a woman when she has a Springfield 40 strapped to her hip.
Carla handily answered many more questions, but the last question of the day was also a doozy. It came from a gordito in the fourth row.
“Officer Diaz, have you ever shot anyone?”
Carla paused a little longer than I thought she should have.
“I never have, and I hope I never have to. We only resort to violent force when lives are in danger to protect ourselves and other innocent people around us. It’s the last thing I’d ever want to do.”
Not wanting to end on a somber chord, Carla pulled out a goodie bag full of police badge stickers and activity books. The kids were grateful, and Mrs. Ybarra, the teacher, was grateful for the time off from babysitting. I was grateful for not having to sit through another one of Dean’s oral dissertations. If all Mondays involved putting the screws to your old employer in the morning and making fourth graders laugh in the afternoon, they wouldn’t have such a bum rap.
---
“You were lying about not shooting anyone. Am I right? I know I’m right.”
“Some of those kids might grow up to be cops, and I don’t want them to think it’s all about shooting people. I’m trying to weed out the sociopaths if you don’t mind. We have a few already I think.”
“Yeah, I’ve probably met some of them. I can see why they send you instead of some of the WWE rejects I’ve come across.”
“A lot of those super buff cops are really just big teddy bears, and the kids love them. They’re like superheroes. You have to be a super villain to fear those lovable hunks. Is that you, Sheldon?”
“I’ll admit I wasn’t always a responsible partier in my younger days, and on more than one occasion, I’ve had the knee of some behemoth in blue drilling into my spine. And I’ll admit, I probably had it coming. But my super villain days are definitely over.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
We were driving back towards the Pacific, and Carla’s aviators were two intense glowing orbs of sky blue fire protecting a couple drops of smooth dark chocolate. If all cops looked like her, crime would be out of control. We’d all want to be cuffed and carted off for interrogation.
“You think you can handle a bunch of high school kids on your own, Sheldon?”
“I’ve got a few ideas. I have a feeling I’ll either be a huge hit, or I’ll be seeing lawsuits from the parents of emotionally scarred teenagers.”
“You were a teenager once. Just put yourself in their shoes, and you’ll know what to say.”
“I was ‘A’ teenager. There are so many different ways to be a teenager. I’d take fourth graders over teenagers any day.”
“Stay away from my fourth graders. I almost had to use deadly force back there to keep your mouth closed.”
“We all had a lot of fun, didn’t we? Great job by the way. I was impressed. You won over the crowd. I can see why Nell would like you. How did you guys hook up anyway?”
“Doing the community outreach stuff is one of my favorite things about my job. There is so much negative energy with my job, it’s nice to bring in a little of the positive. I love talking to groups of people, and I’m pretty good at it. I didn’t know I’d like it until I started doing it. Then I started thinking, if I like doing this so much, I should try to do it more. So I tracked down Nell. Do what you love, right?”
“Yep. Do it until someone stops you with the force of a signed agreement and the funding of a multinational conglomerate. Then you have to find something else that you love doing.”
“If you love pissing people off, that’s probably not a good thing.”
“It can be fun, but it is very expensive.”
Carla dropped me off at my place while many of my neighbors wondered why and how I was able to employ Los Angeles’ finest taxi service.
“I’ll see you around, Sheldon. Take care.”
“Ditto.”
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