Good morning, Netizens...

 

Egods, it's just after 1:00 AM and as often is my habit, I have crawled forth from my bed-cave to answer an old man's natural call and check the news wires after an otherwise very arduous and terribly sad day of mayhem and death. While I am sitting at my desk in the Great Chair, I hear a brief blat on a police car siren. What to my bleary eyes appears but a police car outside my window, its lights flashing in the darkness, with a man laying prone on the street pavement.

 

Rather than groveling in paranoia or trepidation, my wife and I begin cautiously monitoring events on the street outside. The officer gives the prone suspect several verbal commands which, to our uninformed eyes, the individual on the pavement appears to comply with. It is over within a matter of moments, and the police car moves on down the street, the suspect drifts on down the street as well.

 

What neither the police officer nor the suspect realize is that, based upon our experiences, people who walk down our street at one in the morning and arouse the suspicions of the police are generally always monitored closely. It doesn't take a band of heroin addicts or retailers armed to the gills shooting at police to arouse our suspicions. It doesn't even take a handful of police cars rumbling through our neighborhood to arouse our trepidations. For the most part, ours is a placid community of working-class people, most of whom struggle each day to pay their bills and live peaceably with one another. Anything that deviates from that norm is automatically suspect.

 

It was too bad about the guy being rousted by police for walking innocently enough down the street, but the alternatives, ie., late-night burglaries and assaults, simply are not acceptable. Now it's time to creep back beneath the sheets, perhaps to dream of better times. Sleep well.

 

Dave

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