Police

I saw something the other day that made me think. We were in this roadside convenience store and deli and we were eating a delicious lunch that was more delicious than you would expect out of a neighborhood convenience market. Annie and I were enjoying our meal and noticing how busy the place was; people from all walks of life were grabbing lunch or a snack at this apparent local gem. We noticed a local police officer come in and grab a snack and step in line. This officer happened to line up after a mother and her five or six year old child. The child happened to have the same snack as the police officer and grew excited when he noticed. He began a conversation with the officer, asking all about “bad guys,” the officer’s uniform and equipment, and then proceeded to tell the man that he wanted to become a police officer so he could “shoot the bad guys,” or something to that effect.

Throughout this interaction I was touched and blessed by both the child’s excitement and reverence for the officer, and the officer’s reciprocated excitement and sweetness to the boy. The boy was clearly excited to see a “real-life” policeman in his full uniform with the gun and nightstick and everything. The officer was so great at explaining that he “doesn’t want to shoot the bad-guys,” but also accepting the child’s excited respect. Annie and I thought that most policemen probably really appreciate moments like these, in a world and occupation where they see some of the lowest lows. I also thought about how I have recently felt more respect and gratitude toward people like police, firefighters, military and other service-people.

Judging my personal experience with police officers and being pulled over, I have an incredible knack for drawing officers who either don’t like me or want to really show me a lesson because of my youth, or my size, or maybe because I feel it’s wrong to lie and say I wasn’t speeding when I knew I was. Whatever the reason, though, I have just had really bad experiences with officers being really rude and even mean to me. Now of course, these aren’t my only experiences with officers, I can remember working closing shifts at Starbucks, and in gratitude, frequently giving officers who stopped in free coffee (don’t tell Starbucks, it didn’t happen often, but you don’t want The Green Machine after you).

Anyway, this vignette reminded me of an innocence that our culture somehow loses. As kids, we all look up to cops with the highest respect, admiration and awe, but somewhere along the road, maybe through bad situations that leave us with a salty taste in our mouths, or maybe just out of unfounded prejudice, we begin to see police as “the man” or “the fuzz” or whatever other ridiculous image our culture concocts. I am ashamed to say that I have allowed my own perceptions of police and other service-people to be colored by these cultural inaccuracies. Sure there are the stories from the paper and the news about corrupt cops, but that’s simply because we live in a broken world and of course, even police can be consumed by that. I realized for me to color my perception of police on those bad stories is like people who draw their perception of Christians from the wackos on TV, radio, the news and everywhere else we see crazy “Christians”.

Well, I walked away from this lunch encounter with a little more tangible respect for our service people. I mean, I respected them before, but it grew a little deeper and more real. I am also more thankful for how much these men and women give; all the more because they do it to protect and serve an ungrateful and bitter culture which I am a part of. I hope I can continue to have more respect and gratitude towards these public servants, and I will sure try to show them more, maybe giving off a bit of child’s wonder.

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