To Be Thankful For

[JaydeMoon]

My uncle wrote this yesterday:

Hey folks, I get to work today, and believe me, I'm actually glad to be here. I don't have anything better to do and days like these kind of remind me why I signed up for this job. So when you read this don't feel any sympathy for me for having to work on this holiday. I want to be here. But I was just sitting here thinking about what it's like to work at a place like this on Thanksgiving and this was my thought...

On this day of thanks, if you need something to be thankful for other than your health or being stuck in Iraq in a hole you dug last week, let me share what will go on at the average patrol station in Los Angeles County.

Inside the station, our lobby will be used throughout the day as a meeting place for child custody exchanges. The station is used for parents who hate each other and a judge has decided some form of security is needed to keep the parents from fighting during the exchange. Typically, judges in this county allow children to spend half the day with each parent on disputed holidays, so all day we will have scared crying children standing at the feet of their arguing parents..and this will go on until we kick them out.

We will have at least 4 traffic accidents on our PM shift, two will have some significant injuries. Our early morning shift will have the same number but they will almost all involve drunk drivers.

We have three shifts. At least two will have a serious medical emergency other than a traffic accident and because its a holiday, attempted suicides (and successful ones) are more likely to occur today than any other day except for Christmas Day.

Very good people will bring food to the station (and fire stations) throughout the day in appreciation for their public servants who have to work on the holiday. We'll be too afraid to eat it for fear of it being laced with narcotics or poisoned, because it has happened in the past.

Deputies and officers will begin the shift with the idea that someone will have to do something really bad to go to jail. They want to go home to their families on time, and of all days to get cut a break by a law enforcement officer, Thanksgiving and Christmas days are the two times your going to get it. But domestic violence incidents will spike today along with DUI's and alcohol fueled assaults in general. The result will be more arrests than the average Thursday.

So if you want something to be thankful for, other than you still have all your limbs and you're not homeless and starving, thank the person across the dining room table from you for being there with you on this holiday, and for not being the kind of piece of shit we get to deal with today.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tom