Creator1

This two weeks, my entire family has had and gifted the a variant of the flu throughout the house. As most of you may already know, this is one of the worst years for the flu in recent history. So, my wife took our youngest to urgent care, and had her first ever encounter with law enforcement in our town. I’d like to say that this experience left both of us happy and confident in our local law enforcement, but instead, it did the opposite.

“Ms. [Teacher’s} name is here” my wife texted me. This was our second child’s teacher. She looked miserable, bundled up in her puff jacket, barely maintaining consciousness in the urgent care chair. Her daughter looked equally as ill. The teacher gives an exhausted wave and returns back to twilight sleep while she waits her turn.

The door opened and another patient came in and slumped down two chairs away from my wife. He was a man in his mid to late forties, he had a scooped brim baseball cap, the kind that purposely conceal your face, he ducked his chin low and curved his spine to the chair, making him look much shorter than he was. His right hand was grossly swollen, a purplish-red blob with slightly dried blood, and stretching skin. It was quite a grotesque scene for my child.

The room sat in silence, only interrupted by coughs and the office calling people back to be seen. Finally, the man who slumped down spoke.

‘you have really big feet!’ he said, without moving an inch. Most people in the waiting room looked up, unaware of whom he was speaking to, but nobody replied.

‘I said, you have really big feet.’ He repeated. My wife gave him a puzzled look.

‘Are you talking to me?’ She asked abruptly.

‘Yeah, you have really big feet.’ He said a third time.

‘Oh. Okay.’ She said, tucking her feet closer to her chair and our child. The teacher scowled, as she felt the comment was odd. The man remained slumped with his hat down only exposing a weak chin.

He let out a sigh, one of those sighs for attention that children give when they are bored, ‘I’m in law enforcement, ya know… Dangerous work.’

‘I see…’ She said, letting the silence sit.

‘Did you hurt your hand on the job?’ She finally asked.

The law enforcement officer perked up at the question, ‘No actually!’ He said delighted to hear himself speak, ‘My son wouldn’t stop running his fucking mouth… And well ya know, you can’t just punch your owns kids hahahaha.’

My wife, thankful she was wearing a mask, exchanged wide eyed glances with the teacher while the law enforcement officer chatted away.

‘Ah, well, so instead of punching my kid, I just punched the wall behind him several time, really scaring him! I know how that sounds, but ya know, gotta discipline those kids, or else they’ll wind up in jail, from people like me!’

At this point, my wife is feeling pretty uncomfortable in the urgent care waiting room. She wondered if this guy was a law enforcement officer, or a crazy person. He did get a phone call from someone he called sergeant, so she believed this to be true. While nobody in my household is attends churches or services, the entire room was put at ease when a priest entered the room.

‘That’s my priest.’ He informed my wife, who returned a quick stern ‘hmm’ as the priest sat in between my wife and the law enforcement officer.

‘Hey Father.’ The law enforcement officer greeted.

The priest appeared to be caught off-guard by the greeting, he looked up through his glasses and met eyes with the officer. He smiled an uncomfortable smile,

‘Hello there.’ he said returning to his book. It was very obvious that the Catholic didn’t recognize him at all, and rather than address the issue, chose to ignore it, but the man pressed on. It is interesting to note that the officer slightly hid his hand and didn’t mention his reason for being there to his priest.

‘It’s alright that you don’t remember me, I don’t get time to come in because I’m working all the time at (police dept’s name). But my mom cleans the church.’

Slightly irritated, the priest feigned jolliness and engaged the man.

‘Oh that’s so lovely! What’s your moms name.’

He very sternly, without breaking eye contact, stated his mom’s name.

The priest ruminated for a bit, ‘huh… I cannot place the face.’ Immediately burying his face into his book. My wife would sum up this trip with overhearing a staff member (not whispering), telling the priest he had a UTI in the waiting room as she walked out.

My child and wife were called back and didn’t get to hear the rest of this goldmine. I think about this often, these are real people in our communities, law enforcement officers who want to hit their children, priests who can’t remember their flock (although, I’m terrible with names, so I give him a pass), teachers who also have lives outside the classroom. I don’t know how I would prepare my kids for these conversations, I don’t even know how to handle any of these conversations my wife endured other than to laugh.