Medium Notch Detective
Being a parent is working at an underfunded police department:
Example 1) As a detective, I don’t have the time or resources to prove my case.
Why can’t six-year-olds just hold things like a normal person? Why do they have to hold the edges of stuff and everything always falls and then they hold it loosely under their arm and then it falls and they put it in an unzipped bag and it falls and they throw it at the ground and it still falls. My daughter can command with the authority of a pilot telling her crew what needs to happen to land a plane. She says things like, “I CAN’T HOLD THAT! I HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF ALREADY!” To continue the pilot analogy, getting from the car to inside our home after school is a dangerous fly zone. After school and especially in winter because winter is evil and doubles the kid stuff. After school pick up, there is an explosion inside the car of water bottles, pictures, worksheets, that tiny rubberband bracelet that Jack gifted her that devastatingly slipped between the seats which wouldn’t have been a problem yesterday because you hated him but now you like him again, so, it’s a problem, mittens, boots, hats, half eaten snacks and a soggy permission slip.
We step out of the car. I can see the front door in sight! I am so close to a safe landing at home and yet the air in this transition/curb/sidewalk/muddy snow area is turbulent. Anyone who has witnessed a winter outdoor tantrum just feet from a front door understands this danger zone. When she turned to me to tell me she had too much stuff already, I was holding 5 bags and balancing my unfinished coffee on my pinky finger. She was carrying one piece of paper. And when I asked her to at least carry her own backpack she said, “WITH WHAT HAND?!” as she placed her one free hand on the other corner of her one paper. Damn you Mo Willems for teaching her how to speak in all caps by the way. The underfunded detective within me sighed. Because look, I have so much data and facts. I could prove that 5 bags and a coffee weigh about 30 pounds and her one paper weighs 2 ounces and therefore she should help me. But without the money to show her on a scale, she won’t believe me. Why? Because she drew a cave on that one paper and she says it weighs more than my bags. Unless I have the money to put all these things on a giant scale and prove it, she’s right. I have the reality and weight of 5 bags and a room temperature coffee. She has the imagination of endless illogic and a potential tantrum. … I give in to my 43 inch tall commanding pilot. I would rather land the plane. I can’t prove my case in time. She wins until I get more funding. She will always win and I will always be under-resourced.
Being a parent is working at an underfunded police department:
Example 2) I hear only one side of the story and don’t have the time or resources to gather interviews from all involved.
After touchdown and bag schlepping into our apartment, my son enters the living room with a story from school. He has been wronged! I don my LA Dodgers detective hat and a sparkle pen and the back of a reading log that wasn’t finished to take notes. Today there was a war. Some might call it a game but to him it was not. During indoor recess a paper gun in his army didn’t have enough tape and therefore flopped every time it was aimed. At which time the opposing country (red table) ripped up this gun (it was safe to approach because its lack of rigidity made it impossible to incur injury) and shouted “ooo-ba-ba-cah-kayo!” while making the six-seven hand motion in the faces of my son’s country (blue table). I pushed my detective hat back on my head and asked my son, the apparent “victim,” to round up the other people involved because I needed to conduct more interviews. At which time he told me I didn’t need anyone else’s point of view and why didn’t I believe him. I said I did believe him but it’s standard protocol to hear all sides in an investigation. He rolled his eyes. I asked when he could bring the other 20 in. He said, “when will this department get a bus so I can pick them up?” I shrugged and said we will never have a bus and what will probably happen sooner is you get a license and a car to round them up yourself. “But that will take 8 years!” he moaned. “9 if you lived in New York so at least there’s that,” I said. “They are so mean!” my son growled and followed it quietly with “that’s why I ripped James’ folder.” I stood up, aghast, knocking off my hat. “You did what?!” But I didn’t get anything more from him because due to the underfunding, my “bad cop” partner had been let go last month (our perpetually frowning neighbor kid). “How will I ever get the whole story?” I sighed. “You’ll have to come volunteer for the winter party and ask them yourself!” he said. “But I have to work my other job that day as this is not my sole source of income. No income really.” I sighed and we stepped out of the living room office and into the kitchen. Where I proceeded to hug him and tell him “that really stinks your gun got ripped up.” Then he ran off and made another one so I guess he needed a hug not an investigation. Which was good because we wouldn’t have been able to hear anyone else’s story anyway. I thought that that had been necessary because I don’t want to raise a kid who doesn’t own his side of the issue. But we’re underfunded. And hugs are free.
Being a parent is working at an underfunded police department:
3) I don’t really know how to label this example but it fits somehow.
Finally, I’m pretty sure there’s a babyfaced homicide detective who has recently been added to the department! This is thrilling because up until this point I’ve been taking on all the dead stuff cases – dead spiders, dead mice, dead squirrels, dead rats (at one soccer practice half a dead rat). Unlike pigeons, lots of other things are not good at cities because they haven’t learned wings. I’m nearly positive this babyfaced detective is my six year. For example, she unearths leads on 222 year old cold cases. After listening to Hamilton for the 92,093 time in the car last week, there was a pause. Then she asks, “Did Hamilton hit a bird when he shot at the sky?” To which her brother said, “No, those birds were quick and smart.” And I’m wondering if the focus on him founding the national bank and the country was all a rouse to distract us from the bird murderer he really was. Lin, Maya has your sequel.
Her research on the skeleton and the post alive physical body is also active. One night after I tried to answer her questions about when I will die (which is often), I sang her a bedtime song. I thought she’d fallen asleep when she sat up and asked “Do I have bones in my cheeks?” Always thinking, this one! I waited another 15 minutes and she hadn’t moved, so I tiptoed out of her room when she sat up again as if we were in mid conversation and said, “I don’t want to be buried in a box” and I said “You got it.” Maybe she isn’t green. Maybe this babyfaced detective has solved enough cases already to have someone holding a grudge or a revenge plan or the other half of that dead rat. The musing on death continued the next day. As she happily watched The Berenstein Bears she said, “How many more years till I turn 100?” … Interested in math? Curious about age? Just casually aware of dying at all times. Then the next week I started to get worried she knew of an arson plan she wasn’t sharing with the rest of the department. “How did the fires start in California?” she asked. I laughed and she locked in and said, “No. Really.” When I asked why, she said because she needs to know how to catch the person and if they started a fire in Chicago and we had to run out of our apartment she needs to plan as to which stuff on the fridge we could remake and what we’d have to buy again at Target. Whew. This is getting serious, I thought. But it wasn’t till the next week that I got worried for my own life. Had she somehow turned the bad guy’s attention away from her and onto me?! After dinner the other night she smiled and said, “When you die, I’ll get to use your purse!” I mean. It’s true but why would she say that? And then after her bath she dries off and goes, “I’m going to give you something so you can remember me when you’re dead.” “Oh. Okay, thanks,” I say trying to hide my fear. And she hands me two tops to some playdough containers. Is this a clue? Should I read into the colors of the two tops (red and orange)? Fire? I now don’t trust her and once again, due to underfunding, there is no HR to go to about this. I guess I’ll just have to watch my back and be thankful that I’m off the dead stuff. For now anyway.