Unplanned elbow bump

I work in a hospital and was sitting at the station when the phone rang.

‘Excuse me, ma’am. This is Microsoft Security and we have found a number of viruses on your PC …’

So I prepared myself for the usual BS where they get you to bring up some list of tasks with scary-looking X’s next to them, and then effectively get you to set up remote access so they can lock you out and look for cash to unlock. Yawn!

Well, I just gave him the answers he was looking for until eventually I stopped and just said:

‘At this point I must now inform you that you are currently in conversation with a law enforcement officer and that all further communications will be recorded under Section 11.b of the Digital Data Protection Act 2016. Any further attempts to gain access to this machine is a violation of criminal law and you may be prosecuted. My name is Detective O’Callaghan …’

‘Fuck you!’

‘Sir, there is no need for profanity. Under the rights granted by the aforementioned act, we have begun a tracing algorithm through your voice-over-IP broker and …’

He hangs up.

About 10 seconds later, the phone on the other side of the desk (sequentially the next number) rings.

‘Excuse me, ma’am. This is Microsoft Security …”

‘Yes. This is Dectective O’Callaghan. We are still in the process of tracing your location and all outgoing traffic has been routed to our server.’

This time there’s an uncertain pause. Then he hangs up.

About 30 seconds later, the phone halfway down a corridor starts to ring. Well, I moved like Usain Bolt to grab it.

‘This is Microsoft Security …’

‘This is still Dectective O’Callaghan …’

At which point there was an immediate hang up and no nearby phones rang again.

Barney in Real Estate

Yes, today’s China-Russia relations are very close and friendly from the government level to the non-governmental level. This is a model of a new type of international relations with win-win cooperation and has also contributed a lot to the maintenance of world peace.

So how should we understand the Chinese people’s favor for Russia? I think this can be traced back to the Soviet era. When the PRC was just established, the domestic social economy urgently needed development, but at the same time, it was blocked and isolated by the West. The Soviet Union provided important political, economic and talent support to China.

On October 2, 1949, the Soviet Union took the lead in announcing the recognition of the PRC, and then strongly supported China’s industrial construction. From 1949 to 1960, at least 20000 Soviet experts came to work in China to help China with its economic reconstruction. From 1950 to 1958, nearly 7500 Chinese college students and teachers were sent to study in the Soviet Union. These assistance and exchange activities have deeply planted the seeds of China-Russia friendship in the hearts of the Chinese people.

In 2001, China and Russia signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, which marked a new stage in the development of China-Russia relations. China-Russia exchanges have witnessed vigorous development. Since 2006, China and Russia have successively held national cultural exchange activities, and the exchange mechanism has been very perfect. In 2019, the number of Chinese tourists to Russia reached about 2.26 million. More and more Chinese have personally felt the Russian people’s enthusiasm and friendship for the Chinese people.

In addition, I think a more important point is that Russia has expressed firm support for China on many major issues in recent years. Russia is an active participant for the Belt and Road Initiative and the AIIB, and also fully supports China’s hosting of the 2022 Winter Olympics. Many Russian media also spoke highly of the development of China’s human rights protection and the great achievements in poverty alleviation. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the West has repeatedly blackened China on the issue of virus origin and vaccine, the Russian government and experts also expressed their firm support for China. These friendly moves have been firmly remembered by the Chinese people. Therefore, China-Russia friendship has a broad foundation among the people.

the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry supported China’s fighting against COVID-19 in Chinese

For the Chinese people, China-Russia relations have great particularity. The friendship between the two countries has a profound historical tradition. Today, Russia is an important strategic partner of China and a good neighbor and friend who can stand the test of international changes. Sincerity, reciprocity and mutual respect are probably indispensable elements for maintaining friendship.

PEPPER STEAK | recipe Chinese style

The oldest burger chain still operating in the US is White Castle. In fact, White Castle is generally considered to be the first fast food chain ever.

White Castle began in March 1921, in Wichita, Kan., selling their small burgers for 5 cents apiece (about 75 cents in 2021 dollars). They opened up a second restaurant the following year, they introduced carryout service in 1927, and within a decade after opening they had dozens of locations stretching between Wichita and New York.

Oldest White Castle building still in existence, built in 1927 and located in Indianapolis

Throughout their history, White Castle has remained concentrated in the Midwest and the Northeast, although their Northeast presence currently is only the in New York and New Jersey. In recent years they’ve started opening up a few locations in western states and in Florida.

White Castle is not the oldest existing chain that sells hamburgers. That would be A&W. However, A&W has not always been a burger chain.

The first A&W opened in Lodi, Calif. in June 1919. However, for their first few years, A&W sold only root beer – no food. A&W didn’t open their first restaurant until 1923, and even then the menu was limited and, from sources I’ve been able to find, concentrated on hot dogs and snacks. Larger menus including burgers didn’t appear until the 1960s and 70s (although some scattered locations may have served them previously; franchises for the first 45 years of the chain simply bought rights to the root beer recipe and name, and there was no standardized food offering, and the vast majority of locations were still primarily root beer stands with limited food offerings).

So, while A&W as a business is older, the first half of its history is burger-free, leaving White Castle as not only the undisputed oldest burger chain still operating in the US, but the oldest burger chain, period.

25 years ago there was rampant corruption in China.

You could literally go to houses of CPC officials and find stacks of gold or bricks of 100RMB notes.

It was pretty bad.

After around 2005 there was a sea change.

Part was the Internet, and part of it was the Corruption Police. -MM

Where people report others if they’re living life styles beyond what they can afford. So a CPC member/politician suddenly has a nice car appear outside their home that is way above their pay grade?

People take photos and complain. Other people take photos and complain this this causes the official to get investigated.

They were found corrupt?

They get the death penalty typically.

Today with the advent of cashless payments and old people like me wandering around Shenzhen trying to pay for shit in cash 😀 it’s even harder to get away with as it’ll be flagged by computers monitoring transactions – THIS IS NOT UNUSUAL.

I got flagged a few times and investigated by HMRC when I first started business.

I’d chuck £15000 into my account after a great sale and I’d literally get tax inspectors banging on my door.

It happened quite a few times.

So while corruption can still happen and undoubtedly there are CPC guys with bricks of RMB in their homes.

They’re Robert De Niro in goodfellas…

The moment they buy anything they get flagged up by citizens. So they can’t buy anything.

The economics of work.

Do the math:

• Minimum wage in 1970: $2.10/hr
• Price of 1 oz of gold in 1970: $37

— — > Back then, 17.62 minimum-wage-hours were needed to buy 1 oz of gold. ($37 / $2.10)

Today…

• Minimum wage (Texas): $7.25/hr
• Price of 1 oz of gold: $1,800 (aprox)

— —> Today, a minimum wage worker needs to work 248.27 hours to afford 1 oz of gold. ($1,800 / $7.25)

THAT’S 14X MORE!

In today’s dollars, a minimum wage worker would need to make: $7.25 x 14 = $101.50/hr to have the equivalent purchase power of 50 years ago.

When will this trend stop?

It won’t.

The value of labor will continue to be depreciated.

Stop working for money — instead, invest your time building assets that make money for you.

Back in 2010, I made a very grave mistake.

I watched the FIFA World Cup.

IN ENGLAND.

IN A PUB.

SURROUNDED BY ENGLISHMEN.

ALL OF WHOM WERE IN VARIOUS STATES OF INEBRIATION.

BEHIND ENEMY LINES, AS IT WERE.

I’ve house-sat for millionaires. I’ve walked the mean streets of Los Angeles at night. I’ve hiked in the jungles of Africa. And I’ve never, ever felt that I needed a gun on my hip as much as I did that day.

Let me back up here and explain.

I had friends living in Newcastle upon Tyne in North East England. I’d befriended them when we all taught at the same school in South Korea from 2008–2009. In 2010, with all of us back home in our respective countries, these friends of mine contacted me and said, “Hey, why don’t you come visit us in Newcastle? We can watch the World Cup!”

Sitting in a La-Z-Boy in the middle of the Mojave Desert, I didn’t think that watching the World Cup in an English pub would be all that dangerous. It sounded like a hell of a time, in fact. I’d never been to England and I was looking forward to the chance to see my old chums again and maybe sample the pub life in Great Britain. So, of course, I enthusiastically said yes, and booked myself a flight.

Then I got off the plane, and I began to realize what exactly I’d gotten myself into.

Every single goddamn building I saw looked like this:

I’m not much of a soccer fan—I played when I was a teenager, then became a referee during summer for pocket money—but I liked the sport. Little did I realize that it was possible for an entire culture to live, sleep, eat, and breathe a sport every four years, and love it to bits in between.

From that point on, my mindset changed. I was no longer an American tourist. While the World Cup was on, and while I was in England, I was a foreign combatant, stranded behind enemy lines. The thought was sobering. My steps became furtive and cautious. My pro-American banter, which I had carefully prepared on the flight over, suddenly deserted me. I became, in the span of an instant, the most polite and inoffensive American tourist the world has ever witnessed.

After a quick run to the supermarket for some gameday essentials (sandwich bread, bacon, some bottles of cider, and a 24-pack of Stella Artois), we repaired to my male friend’s mum’s house to pregame. And by “pregame” I mean “watch the South Korea/Greece match.”

That is correct, ladies and gentlemen—the English pregame for a football match by watching a football match.

To be fair, the English did have some skin in this game. The Korean footballer Park Ji-sung, worshipped as a god in his home country for playing midfield for Manchester United, was playing for the Korean team. Perhaps not surprisingly, the match was a shutout. Two-nil, Korea.

Then it was time. The cab rolled up to the curb. We were off to the pub to watch the first real game of the day.

England vs. the US.

Ho boy.

We met some friends of my friends outside the pub, and then went in and sat down. Those big pub doors gaped wide—a black mouth ready to swallow any traitor in our midst. I walked through those doors with the cautiousness and trepidation of Indiana Jones entering an ancient and highly booby-trapped temple. The inside of the pub was just as caked with English flags as was the rest of the town outside. I vowed to keep my unironic utterances of the word “soccer” to a minimum.

We sat at a table in front of the big projector screen. We bought a pitcher and drank and talked. The pub was everything I’d imagined. Squeaky-clean glasses. Dark wood bar. Brass taps. Iron-hard tables and chairs. Big windows that didn’t seem to admit any light at all.

Speculation flew back and forth across the table about England’s chances in this year’s competition. The general consensus was that this first game would be a piece of cake. England would steamroll the US and move on to the next round. I bantered a little, half-heartedly, but the cutting and incisive cheek which I’d cooked up on the plane ride over had crumbled to dust under the weight of the storied pomp of Europe. Then, this being England, the question of betting came up. Not being one to back down from a challenge, no matter what the odds—and the odds were 19 to 1 in this case—I put a pound on the US to win.

And then…it all began. The pub hushed reverently. The enormous pitch at Royal Bafokeng Stadium in Rustenburg, South Africa flared into view on the projector screen. I took a nervous swig of beer. This was it. This was what I’d come here to see. This is what every red-blooded Englishman had waited with bated breath to witness. This was the World Freakin’ Cup.

Three minutes into the game, England scored.

It was as though Jupiter himself had sundered the very heavens. Cries and wails and howls and roars erupted in the pub, falling upon the ear like a million onrushing gallons of piping-hot tea. I looked around to see if Napoleon’s Imperial Guard was retreating, but couldn’t make them out. The roars and cheers of the Britons in the pub continued, and my friends at the table joined right along in, laughing and pounding the table and slapping each other on the back.

So this is what it’s like to be a real fan of “the footie,” I thought.

Exactly thirty-six minutes later, I was up at the bar ordering another pitcher. I happened to glance up at the screen, and, without any warning at all, or as much as a by-your-leave…

…the USA scored.

My American-ness, which had been lying dormant ever since I’d emerged from the airport and seen all those St. George’s Crosses festooning every house and car and fence, abruptly reasserted itself. The Star-Spangled Banner started playing in my head. Red, white, and blue fireworks burst in my mind’s eye. The bikini-clad Statue of Liberty threw her arms around my neck, wrapped her legs around my waist, and stuck her tongue so far down my throat that I could taste soufflé. A grizzly bear wearing a cowboy hat, spurs, and a matching pair of ivory-handled Colt revolvers, with a can of Budweiser clenched in his furry paw and an anything-but-Cuban cigar in his teeth, crashed through the wall on a John Deere tractor, at which point both bear and tractor exploded into a mushroom cloud of bald eagles, apple pie, Big Macs, ranch dressing, tax rebates, and jury summons.

Every nerve ending and muscle fiber in my body was suddenly ready to jump and jive. I had the sudden overmastering urge to leap into the air and drench the entire pub with the contents of the pitcher of Foster’s in my hand. My mind—which never has been very interested in my survival, nor the health, welfare, or wholeness of my body—imperiously demanded that I shout some ludicrous pun, like “BOOYAH! YOU’VE BEEN SOCCER-PUNCHED, BABY!”

Fortunately for me, my reptilian brain (a hard-bitten survivalist) managed to wrest control of my body away from my so-called higher brain and prevent my mouth from following through on this mad impulse.

Then he clamped down on the rest of my body to prevent it from leaping into the air. As the muffled curses and moans of beefy Geordie shipbuilders filled the dim air of the pub, I stood there, body quivering, eyebrows seesawing back and forth, arms vibrating as they sought vainly to shoot skyward. With every ounce of self-control I possessed, I turned, politely handed the barman his £7.50, and sat back down at the table with my friends.

But it was on, now. On like Donkey Kong. I was hooked. I was in it to win it. Suddenly, I was a mutha-humpin’ fan of soccer—er, football. I was invested in this game. I leaned forward, planted my elbows on the table, and glued my eyes to the projector screen.

The rest of the match was fiercely contested. The ball changed hands—er, feet—dozens of times. My hungry eyes followed its every move, enraptured. Numerous attempts on the goal were made, glorious charges thwarted, desperate retreats sounded. It was a battle in every sense of the word. Disaster loomed for both teams, over and over and over again. The fate of my one-pound coin hung precariously in the balance. My heart beat so fast I thought it would leap out of my chest.

As an honored guest of England and a recipient of English hospitality, I felt embarrassed to be praying for a win. As a red-blooded American male, I felt embarrassed to be praying for a loss. I momentarily felt bewildered by the unfamiliar sensation of being embarrassed by everything, but then I remembered that I was in England. I was fitting right in.

I relaxed and resolved just to be embarrassed no matter what happened. I looked around to see if there was perhaps someone I could apologize to for nothing in particular.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was as embarrassed as I’ve ever been to be an American.

As it turned out, the mischievous gods of English football had one more surprise in store for me:

The game ended in a tie.

Many years ago when my children were young and needed a Pediatrician, we witnessed the doctor evict a set of parents and their children.

We had been waiting for a a while when a family came into the lobby for the medical office. They immediately checked in and the terrorism of the lobby began. The parents sat down and allowed the children to run wild and walk, jump, kick, yell, and be obnoxious. No attempt was made by the parents to control their children.

A staff member came out and asked the parents to calm their children down. In reply the parents indignantly said they didn’t believe in restraining their children.

The look on the staff members face was priceless. She politely turned around and went back into the offices. Thank God the door into the office was unable to be opened from the lobby. The “little darlings” were mimicking her and being real little brats.

My children were politely sitting next to me and watching. I looked at both their faces and they were upset with what they were seeing.

About ten minutes later the door to the office opened and the doctor came out and approached the parents. Very politely, he told them they would need to collect their children and leave, that he no longer was their doctor.

Those two people were no longer calm and started really cussing him out.

His response was to explain they would either politely leave or security would escort them out. After which he stood there and waited for them to get their things together and leave.

The parents sat there and stared at him in disbelief.

Again he stood there and said, “You have two minutes to corral your children, get your stuff and leave, or security and possibly the police will escort you and your children out of the building.”

About that time two building security guards came up the staircase into the lobby area and waited.

It was obvious the parents were trying to control the doctor’s decision and it wasn’t going their way. The kids were still yelling, and walking over furniture, He turned to security and nodded. They came forward and said, “Come on, let’s go.”

The front desk was watching and they must have known it wasn’t going to get better. The male parent began to mouth off to the guards. He then rose up and took a swing at about the same time the local police came up the stairs and witnessed the action.

It really got better than.

The real police came forward and took the man to the ground and handcuffed him.

The woman must have thought better than to run her mouth and join him. By now the two little brats were standing next to her quiet as little angels.

One of the building guards helped her with her stuff and escorted her and the brats out of the building. The man in cuffs went into a police car that we could see from the lobby outside the entrance doors.

My children witnessed it all and afterward, my son said, “Mom, you’d never allow us to act like that.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

When we finally saw the doctor, he apologized for the scene in the lobby. I told him, it wasn’t his fault and I sure agreed with the way he handled the situation. He smiled and said, “I hope your children learned from what they saw.”

My daughter spoke up and said, “Those were brats and the parents were too.”

The doctor and I smiled.

Probably more than 60 and fewer than 100. Death notifications are truly one of if not the worst part of the job. I awakened to a reoccurring nightmare of one such call tonight as I do many many nights.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stood outside darkened porch of some poor family at 3:00 in the morning waiting to ring the doorbell and trying to gather my thoughts on what I will say when they come to the door.

I’m always very aware that the people inside are living the last few moments of happiness in their life that they will probably ever truly have. Until you’ve had to look a mother and father in the eye and tell them that their child was killed and will not be coming home again is one of the most horrific things that a person can be asked to do in the line of duty.

Even worse is that we really can’t use euphemisms of any kind like they have are no longer with us for example. You must use the word dead or died or killed. Saying passed away or some other kind euphemism often seen in everyday speech just doesn’t do the job. The loved ones will not even hear it or comprehend subtlety. For the loved ones in shock you must say “died, dead or killed” simply so their mind can even comprehend the message. This makes it even more difficult because you naturally want to be delicate. In our training we’re taught that delicate wording and euphemisms just don’t cut through the shock and trauma the loved one is experiencing.

Anyway, it’s truly a soul-destroying moment for them and to an extent for us. After one child who died in a particularly horrific way, I recall sitting in my squad car for what must have been an hour. I could hear laughter and joy in the living room as I walked up. It’s impossible to explain the feelings that I get when my duty requires me to tear someone’s soul and put them in pain that will never end. Often I would sit in my car after and just want to cry. The time I’m speaking of in particular that always comes to mind (and my nightmares several nights a week) a beautiful 8-year-old boy was eaten alive by a pack of feral dogs in a Park. I lied and said he died of a dog bite and went quickly with no pain. A blatant lie but of course every loved one’s first question is “how”? If you ever tell a family member that there has been an unexpected death in the family and they don’t demand to know how and where it’s almost always true that they killed them or knew in advance. Off topic but interesting.

Regardless of cause the most common means of death in order of frequency were vehicle accident, medical issue, miscellaneous accident and murder). Seemed like murder made it much worse by the reaction. People are always scared their loved ones will get killed in a collision or drop dead of a heart attack. Murder is time brutally cut short and many times is associated with for lack of a better term, a “worse death”, involving more pain, terror. When they told me my Grandfather dropped dead in a Wiggly Wiggly from a massive heart attack it didn’t haunt me like it would if someone had killed him.

You soon learn there is no way to ease their pain and the best method is to be brief, direct, absolute and straightforward…then leave them to their grief. Honestly they don’t hear a word you say after “they’re dead and how it happened”.

People have literally no idea how difficult the job is. If they did people that despise us would be a very infinitesimal minority instead of the enormously popular hobby that it is today. I’m retired and haunted nightly by such things as this topic as well as seeing horrible images in my nightly dreams of things like a young boy totally devoured by dogs like a pack of hyenas eating a gazelle.

I know this is off-topic but it is after 4 a.m. as I write this. I awoke to a dream of a time I arrived at a vehicle accident just in time to watch an elderly woman confused and sitting in her car as flames reached her and she burned alive 3 feet from me while making eye contact and screaming in agony. The flames that started in the leaking gas tank ruptured when her son-in-law rear-ended her after he was rear-ended by a drunk and slammed into her car by the force. I broke the window and was 3 seconds from cutting her seat belt and yanking her head-first out the window (the door was inoperable). Then as I reached in to use my seat belt cutter I always carried since my Fire Rescue/Auto Extrication days, it was as if a man with a flame thrower standing in the rear of the car suddenly blasted her, engulfing her body and the front seat in a huge volume of intense flame so hot I was burned on my face and arms standing outside the vehicle. As the flame totally engulfed her she kept gripping the steering wheel and turned to me and gave a haunting scream of intense agony. Her grown son-in-law was standing at my side. Knowing if I had taken the correct on-ramp to I-70 I would have been there just in time to pull her out with no injuries. Ten seconds between life and an agonizing death.

An hour later I was at a nearby Fire Station with this man who essentially rear-ended and killed his mother-in-law (not his fault but still) giving him emotional support as he had to call his wife. Imagine explaining to your wife you crashed into her mother and she burned to death as a result of the collision.

I ended up taking him to OT Hodges (a local 24-hour diner that Cops, Firemen and Drunks frequent at night to get chili, chili cheese fries, dogs and coffee). We just sat there in silence for what must have been two hours after I was off duty trying to process in our minds what we had just seen. He was barely able to function and I was slightly better because I wasn’t related to the victim we had just watched be cremated alive 36 inches away. I took him to the Adams Mark (a luxury hotel by the Arch downtown) and had a Concierge friend of mine check him into a suite with gratis room service. I made sure department trauma counselors and Red Cross disaster response professionals got over to see him in those first critical hours the next day as well as contacting the Police in his hometown to make sure the wife received help as well. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to get help. I think I thought that it was just part of my job and I needed to “suck it up” and deal with the calls on the job myself (i.e. push those horrors into a dark recess of my mind and ignore them).

I could go on and on. Last messages from husbands for their family as they lie bleeding to death in my arms. One time working as a Firefighter on a nearby departments ambulance to accumulate medical experience necessary in Trauma to be qualified as a Paramedic (Granite City Illinois) taking down the last words of a man cut in half by a truck’s rear bumper. He was on a loading dock and would die instantly when the truck was moved which was the only thing keeping his organs from his bladder to his diaphragm from falling out when it backed into him pinching his waist line between the bumper and the dock. Delivering those last words to the wife and children. Talking to a man on a roof and not finding the words that would convince them to not jump followed by the horrible thud sound of a man hitting concrete. Cutting a family out of a car crushed between two semi trucks compacting it to a 5 foot by 5 foot cube, removing the parents and two kids one piece at a time – the biggest chunk the size of a soft ball. The last gasps of breath of a teenager, shot I was holding as he died. The sound of the blood pooling in their lungs as they slip away first looking at me …then off into the distance right through me. You know when people are dying when you have seen it happen a lot. I always tried to keep them calm and kind of, I don’t know how to describe it in a word…be there as they died. I always try to prompt them “do you want me to give a message to anyone” (they don’t always know just how fast they’re circling the drain and often won’t realize that if they have any last words they should be now …kinda thing).

Really watching what must have been over a hundred people’s life slip away waiting for an Ambulance after every conceivable way to die from falling off a roof to being shot or hit by a car. Not to mention just the average things that stick in your mind like finding the eyeball of a guy who died after a head shot from a 12-gauge and having to pick it up and bag it. Finding fingers and legs/arms and other parts on the side of the road after motorcycle accidents and having to drive them to the morgue to put with the rest of the body. Being at the morgue as a Detective having to watch a victim be autopsied so I can maintain the chain of evidence and collect the bullets pulled out of them to bring to the ballistics lab for analysis. I luckily didn’t do the Morgue thing often. I wasn’t a Homicide Detective and rarely had business at the Morgue. The place creeped me out. They’re pretty gross. Our was built in the 1920s or something with weird old tiles and greenish fluorescent lights. Picture the Morgue in 7 Deadly Sins with Brad Pitt.

I avoided it when possible and was lucky I spent a lot more time as a regular Beat Cop in there than as a Detective. One gross thing people don’t know Cops do is get called to any body that is found. Someone finds an old man that lived alone 3 weeks in a 98 degree room dead. Usually the smell 3 floors away initiates the call. Then the Cop has to sit there. With that body. That decaying, slipping, oozing maggot infested body for hours of just “maintain the scene”. What you’re really doing is just waiting for the Coroner’s guys to get around to coming and collecting the body cause our Detectives are done. So whichever Cops particular Beat that is, he wins the “you’re gonna smell that body in your nose and not eat right for a couple days contest”. Best way to deal with dead body smell is a 3 pronged attack. 1. Vicks UP IN that nose. Not on your lip like on TV. 2. Take coffee grounds, put them in a pan and turn heat on medium. The smell of burned coffee cancels out dead body. 3. Cigars. Smoke em up. Cigar smoke + burning coffee + vicks up in that nose and you can sit and have your bag lunch watching the guys TV with him in the other lazy boy.

I read so so much rage and hate for Police here in Quora and it really does hurt and aggravate those open wounds we suffered protecting the very people who live to insult and hate us. People we would give our lives to save.

I saved so many more lives as a Cop than I ever did as a Marine, Paramedic and Firefighter combined and am left with the nightmares, mental and physical wounds (spinal cord injury and chronic pain for life) but it is the ingratitude and hate of Americans that is my most horrific wound.

Sorry for the rant but it’s just where my mind is tonight as I try to center myself and get through the flashbacks as best I can. I know there are bad people in every profession but if just one reader sees this and has just a small moment of empathy and connection with the pain we bear in the emergency services it will be well worth it.

At least I’m still alive and coping. I have lost many many friends/co-workers who couldn’t cope. One of my best friends packed up all his belongings in his home and wrote and addressed several letters to family and friends. He took report sheets from work and wrote his own death report for the officer that would get the call for his suicide so all they had to do was sign it. He left us a case of Scotch with the letters to his families as well as belongings he wanted his Detective Squad to have. Things from cash to gun/photographs of sentimental value, etc. He drove his car onto the Poplar Street Bridge over the Mississippi between St. Louis and Illinois. He left his wallet, side arm, badge and ID on the seat of his car with a note giving his address and instructions making identification and the investigation easier for the responding Cop…then jumped off the bridge into the icy swift current of the Mississippi channel in December. In the end all he cared about was the impact it would have on the Cops that caught his case and making it easier for us.

He worked as a City Copper for over 30 years and absorbed more poison and trauma than his mind could cope with. He was a wonderful man. He was my friend and I considered a mentor. He left me a note apologizing in his way . It was the final lesson of an old school Cop who made sure his life saving experiences were passed on to a newly minted Patrolman he took under his wing right out of the Academy and guided for years until he couldn’t take the suffering the job caused a day longer. He said he lived years longer than he might because he knew the effect his suicide would have on me and some others. I ended up disabled years many years later by a good hit to the back by a man on PCP (or in some kind of extreme diabetic crisis) who was freaking out in bezerker mode in a fight that lasted 15 minutes and ended up injuring my spine.

Best job I ever had. I miss it everyday. Having worked every job on the other end of the 911 line it was the one where I had the most power to save lives and help people. As a fireman/medic I could only wait for disaster and try to mitigate the harm. As a Cop I could intervene and stop the most evil monsters lurking among us from walking free and preying on the people I swore to defend. I only wish people wouldn’t lump in all 1.3 million of us with the truly tiny percentage that tarnish the badge and disrespect the honor we worked so hard to uphold. For a comparison with another profession…Physicians, MD’s kill over 250,000 Americans each year due to incompetence and professional errors. Police kill fewer than 100. Imagine hating your doctor because you heard that they’re all incompetent and cursing all doctors for the actions of the bad ones. Yet Police are frequently grouped together as malicious and brutal killers and the tiny bad percentage of our profession is no where as lethal as Doctors just as an example. Yet hate and derision for us is literally an American pastime.

You would never dream of lumping your Doctor in with the others that kill a quarter of a million (the numbers they maim from malpractice and improper med doses could be in the millions) and number in the tens of thousands if not more in terms of numbers that kill and maim people with incompetence and lack of skill/training. For every Cop that makes a mistake that kills a citizen there are thousands of Doctors that kill…and not just one or two but repeatedly kill hundreds or more in a career, maim thousands and are never punished or lose their credentials. I offer this not as an excuse for the terrible and disgusting behavior of the minority of Police we all see caught on camera, but as a comparison to other professions and how they’re treated as compared to police despite their racking up hundreds of thousands of kills compared to fewer than 100 questionable deaths Police are responsible for. Not making excuses, just comparisons to show the absurdity of the obsession/hate/disrespect for my profession. I have lost 5 friends gunned down in the line of duty. I lost 4 friends as a Firefighter killed in buildings they were in rescuing victims…1 ran out of air or burned to death and 3 at one time, crushed by collapse of walls and floors. I can’t begin to count the number maimed and disabled like me. I won’t even address the PTSD, suicides and mental trauma on both the Police and Fire side.

*Edit 9/16/20 Since June 1st this year my department alone have had 9 Police shot in the line of duty with 1 dying. 10 shot and 2 dying if you count a retired city Police Captain who was now working for another department who came back to the city to help stop the riots and was murdered by looters at a pawn shop. He was a friend of mine. The last kid killed last week, shot in the forehead leaving 3 kids. Barely on the job a year and was trained by a good friend of mine I went to the Police Academy with. When one of us dies we have family like connections to each other. I feel so bad for Cops today and thank my lucky stars I left with a pension before people stood outside the hospital where two shot Police are in surgery fighting for their lives chanting “WE HOPE YOU DIE”.Crowd gathers outside hospital, chants ‘We hope they die’ after 2 LA County deputies were shot