EMPATHY FEELINGS? LET ‘EM OUT

The first time I wrote out ’empathy feelings’, spell check went to ’empty feelings.’

Empty feelings might be a better key word, just not the one I’m looking for.

But I got an empty feeling scrolling through twitter, through yahoo news, and every other post was red hat related.

Honest blogger that I am, it wasn’t that many.

It just felt like it.

Critics noted the irony.

 

Like most baby boomers, I’ve had good police relationships and I want to keep it that way.

When I get pulled over by a rookie who stands back on the passenger’s side to free his gun-hand, who asks me, ‘Do you have any other weapons in the truck,’ and I say no and ask him what other weapons he sees in the truck.

He said, “I see a machete.”

I’d been chopping black berry vines, not sword fighting in the street. But I didn’t say that.

I also didn’t remind him we were in Tigard, Oregon, not Times Square, not Rwanda.

Like good citizens everywhere across this great land, I listened attentively and gave precise answers to every question.

The man was a police officer wearing a police officer uniform and doing police work.

He was THE MAN, even if he looked like he got his driver’s license last year so he could take his girl to the prom.

My respect is automatic.

There’s no, “You don’t look like no police officer to me, junior. Why’re you writing me a ticket when you should be back home nursing on your momma.”

He looked like a kid in my judgment, but who am I to judge? Leave that to judges.

I wanted him to do his duty with no impedance from me and not draw his weapon.

Young copper and I worked through the problem of speeding, machetes, and suspended judgment.

He saw me either as a dandy old guy who thinks the rules don’t apply to him, or a confused old guy who doesn’t know the difference between Dominoes and Pizza Hut.

It was the opposite from the time I got flagged for speeding on the way to the Portland airport so our exchange student made his flight home.

That time I did the ex-con pull-over routine that I learned from my neighbor so the police officer knows I know the drill.

My neighbor was an ex-con who knew the drill all too well.

I got a warning, not a ticket. He seemed disappointed I wasn’t some kind of King Pin. (Hey Mandy)

 

What Makes a King Pin

The King Pin is the man or woman with the power to appoint law officers.

Who’s the biggest lawman in America?

The Judiciary Act of 1789 created the Office of the Attorney General which evolved over the years into the head of the Department of Justice and chief law enforcement officer of the Federal Government.

Will there be a problem with the Attorney General if they are appointed by a convicted felon, woman attacker, and chief insurrectionist?

I’ve got to say the idea doesn’t inspire confidence in me as a driver getting pulled over by a kid who looks like a middle schooler.

My empathy feelings are not working for a guy who is flaunting his shit in my face.

As a former Army Pfc, museum collections manager, youth sports coach, and one-woman-man, I like my empathy feelings to include people like me so I don’t have to work so hard at it.

I’ve learned things, know things, from my traveling days when I lived in a white-flight neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY.

The same learning happened when I lived in downtown Philadelphia two blocks away from the biggest city hall in America.

Not everyone looked like me, sometimes no one looked like me or my homies from small town Oregon.

And what the hell, it all turned out okay because I worked those empathy feelings.

 

My Hometown With Empathy Feelings

Everybody comes from somewhere, though not everyone is lucky enough to come from North Bend, Oregon.

I’ve been back over the years, and every time I wonder why I left in the first place.

Then I remember.

A man from Coquille learned I was from North Bend.

“City boy,” he said.

North Bend was his definition of big city, not mine.

Neither was Eugene, or Portland.

I didn’t have a city in mind, but it had to be big.

Now I know.

Now I have empathy feelings for everyone who lives in the big cities.

You all have my encouragement to stay where you are.

Just like you don’t want to hear hick from the sticks stories, we don’t want to hear how everything is better where you come from.

When I left New York for good I thought that would be the last time I’d have to hear some New Yorker braying about their block, their borough, or New Jersey.

I was wrong to think that. How wrong?

I think of a guy like Donald Trump growing up in North Bend, but to be sure he would have grown up in Coos Bay and been a Marshfield Pirate, not a North Bend Bulldog.

If he’d been raised right he’d know when enough was enough.

He’d know too much from too little.

He’d have empathy feelings.