Brilliant … But Bouncy

We Prepare to Kill Before We Listen.

Like most people, I am horrified about what’s been happening with guns. Last week, I told my kids not to run if there’s a shooting, but to fall to the floor. I hoped it would increase their odds of survival. I can’t believe I had to tell my babies what to do “in case” someone opens fire with an assault rifle. But I did.

And when something violent hits as close to home as it did yesterday, I jump way beyond “horrified” to “utterly terrified.”

Yesterday, my dad was driving down the street, thinking about doctors. My dad’s body isn’t cooperating with him lately, since he’s 75 and hasn’t stopped moving since someone handed him a basketball in 1955. So he decided to call his doctor, and picked up his cell phone to find the number.

I am not condoning using a cell phone while driving. In fact, it’s a horrible idea. But he wanted to call the doctor, and that’s how he was going to do that.

A policeman saw my dad, phone in hand, and assumed he was texting – which is highly illegal in our state, as it should be everywhere.

So the policeman hit the flashing lights. My dad, who would never text and drive, pulled over immediately. Wanting to explain the situation, my dad started to get out of the car.

And that’s when the policeman pulled out his revolver, and aimed it at my dad’s head.

My dad froze. His life flashed before his eyes. One second he was driving down the road and the next, he was at gunpoint. My dad is a 75-year-old white man. If he had been black, he might already be dead.

Instead, eventually, the gun was holstered and my dad was allowed to drive home.

But just as quickly as my dad realized that he shouldn’t have gotten out of the car, he could have been killed.

My dad shouldn’t have gotten out of the car. Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Law and Order knows that. But my dad made the grave error of assuming that the policeman was a civil human first, and an officer of the law second. 

In this instance, there was no room for civility. And this is our society today. We prepare to kill before we listen.

I have spent a lifetime reminding myself that people are inherently good and that I don’t have to be so afraid all the time. But the media is constantly cajoling me to believe otherwise. And this policeman obviously was trained to expect the worst, all the time.

Sadly, this is a lesson I now have to convey to my teenagers.

Kids, I will say, for your own safety, I need you to know: you can’t trust anyone, not even a police officer, to be rational. So you always have to be the rational one.

They already know not to use their cell phones in the car. But now I have to also explain that if they are ever in the company of a policeman, they should not even move. Be respectful, yes. But also be still. Be very, very still.

This isn’t what I wanted to teach my kids. I remember my childhood as all about bicycles and ice cream. I thought policeman were like Andy Griffith, and guns were those green plastic things we filled with four ounces of water.

Whatever happened to that world?