"I Got Better Than I Deserved"- A Cop Story

 My childhood was a trainwreck.

Just a series of awful events. Strep throat every year, chicken pox, mumps. Whatever pathogen happened to be floating by- it seemed to land on my shoulders. And when covid found me decades later, I got a nice shiny ventilator in the ICU for 9 days. But I survived.

My family moved 6 times by the time I graduated. My folks fought daily, sometimes physically. Throughout my teen years, I just began to develop a bad attitude. The attitude that thinks this shit is never going to change. Parents taking their problems out on their kids. People sense when you have a bad attitude. It's like blood in the water. Folks don't care why you have it so much, most people just think you were born some sort of asshole- and they react to that. I managed to get in a few scrapes with the law with that bad attitude of mine. Almost in every one of those scrapes- I was innocent. What always got me into trouble was my attitude. I want to tell you about one of those episodes in particular.

I should also note that I was no angel either which is a what came first- the chicken or the egg sort of problem. 

I worked in the grocery store bagging groceries in high school. One of my co-workers was a girl my age, about 16, named Kayleen. Kayleen worked in the bakery. I never really had any run ins with Kayleen, or bad words, so what happened to me was always a mystery. Kayleen started stealing other people's payroll checks, driving about 25 miles away, and cashing them at another one of our stores. That was before cameras. Each week, the store manager just left the payroll checks on the managers desk and people came in and grabbed theirs. Because Kayleen was not a master criminal she repeated the behavior often enough that the manager and the cops were waiting for her when she cashed her last stolen check at that out of town store she liked. 

When they nabbed Kayleen, Kayleen told the police that I stole the checks, gave them to her to cash, and then we split the money. I had no clue about any of this. All I knew was that someone was stealing checks. But when Kayleen the thief threw my name into that mess- all hell rained down on me. That night when I went to work, the manager was there. He never stayed past 5. He was there at 7 when I arrived. He took me into the cooler and nearly beat the shit out of me- convinced I was guilty. My father also landed on Kayleen's side. The union rep, to which I paid dues, would not defend me. When the cops finally asked me to take a polygraph- I said bring it.

Somebody actually did some police work and found out that I was still in school or at football practice when the checks were stolen. The police exonerated me before I took the polygraph and Kayleen finally admitted she had made the whole thing up. That was one of several incidents I was implicated in during my teenage years.

I never received an apology from anyone. Kayleen was fired and I never talked to her again.

What Kayleen did for me, was cause me to wonder, "why?" Why had she picked me out of the 50 or so store employees. I had no clue and after careful self-examination- I figured with my attitude, I would make a believable target. I tried to change my attitude. But it was impossible. Between my parents' continual fights, I just began leaving the house, drinking until midnight, until the whole thing melted down the night before high school graduation. My mother had caught my father with another woman and finally this war zone of a marriage was over.

I never failed to take responsibility for my attitude. I knew it was bad. But I had no therapists, nobody to help me, and I tried a number of things that simply didn't work.

The only people that ever helped me- were cops. They listened to me and actually investigated. They were my heroes. They exonerated me. In 1982, I decided to become a cop. Did I still have a few issues? Oh yea. They would not disappear overnight either. So I was one of those rare people, that actually liked cops. They brought sanity to chaotic life. 

I worked 25 years, more or less. I locked up every wife beater I came across. A few women also. Towards the end of my career, and during my Chief of Police phase, my attitude began to deteriorate once again. Eventually I got divorced and then retired, traveling the US on my bulletproof Valkyrie, and settled into New Orleans where I would finally find some peace and serenity.

Throughout all those years, I always knew what the problem was. I just had no way to cure it. I had a few other unjust situations happen but again- it was always my bad attitude that attracted those vultures. People don't pick on nice people. They pick on people they don't like.

In the end, I found an old sweetheart and married her. She just ignores my moodiness. She is an honest, wonderful, and nice person. My finances were secured not because of my state retirement but because I had two grandfathers in the Bakken who tried to scratch a living out of the earth but were wise enough to keep their mineral rights. I have wanted for very little and my wife and I haven't had to work. It has been a blessing.

Steve Jobs once said at a college commencement ceremony, that you cannot connect dots that haven't happened yet. You can only connect the dots that have happened as you look back and reflect. It is true. When I connect those dots, I understand that people were simply behaving in a way that reflected the way I was. What they saw.

It doesn't matter if it was fair. Fair had nothing to do with it. A lesson I learned early on.

I find myself grateful for what I have and what I endured. In that cloud of chaos which was much of my life- I am eternally grateful for what I have. A God of my understanding and a good life.

I got better than I deserved.