Saturday, September 12, 2009

"Dispatch, I have a 10-100"

Anytime you go on the scene of a car accident you never know what you're going to find. Sometimes they're not as serious as you thought and other times they're 10-times worse than what you thought.

There are many things going on at an accident no matter the seriousness. From what I can tell the primary purpose when coppers and firefighters roll on scene is the safety of the victims. Second is getting traffic running smoothly again. That sometimes is a challenge as we all well know. How many of you have sat in traffic for hours then later creep by a vehicle that's rolled over into a ditch? Raise of hands?

Anyway, this was a head-on collision. Four people went to the hospital. No life threatening injuries. And it took about 45 minutes to get the accidents all cleared up. Maybe a little longer. Anyway, I was waiting for the officer on scene to give me the scoop.

After I got in his face a few times he promptly said he would be with me in a minute as did a speed-walk over to his squad car. When he pulled the handled and it didn't open he was about as shocked as I was. What copper locks his keys in his car?

It was rather funny to watch him struggle that second and half with the door. I guess that makes me a bad human-being.

He then went to his trunk and got out a tool that would help him jimmy his door open. Ah, the convenience of being a cop.

Well, after he took care of his "10-100" or "personal problem" he gave me scoop. We both pretended like the incident never happened.

I've seen a lot of things in this world but now I can say I've seen a copper jimmy his door. And let me tell you, it was hilarious.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

The speech of the century


The President of the United States of America decided to take time out of his day to talk to the children of the nation. While the speech was greeted with some enthusiasm, there were many who greeted with apathy or disgust.

I mean, for crying out loud. I couldn't believe my ears when I was told by the administration that public schools had three options: one, not to broadcast it; two, broadcast it; and three, give students the option to leave the classroom if it was being shown.

Are you serious? Since when is a speech by the president dangerous? Don't get me wrong. There have been leaders in history who have brain-washed a nation. This clearly isn't the case. This speech was uplifting and meant to be motivational.

No matter what people think, having an education is important in this day and age. And for the most part I think people agree with that. At the same time I still know people who start college then don't go back because of money or jobs or whatever the case may be. In the end the majority of these individuals end up working dead-end jobs never reaching their full potential. Along with that, they never do what they truly want to do with their life.

So when Barry wants to tell the youth of nation to stay in school and when the going gets tough, get tough with the going, I'm not sure what people are so afraid of.

Parents need to look beyond the edge of their noses and put their politics aside. If they did, there would be more tolerance and less of a perpetuating cycle of closed-minded adults raising closed-minded children.

But remember the heart of the message. Stay in school.