Stupidly

I don't understand why the police do what they do. I haven't taken any criminal justice classes or had any experience or taken any academy training (though I do know how to shoot a gun, but that's a very small proportion of what a police officer has to learn).

But the few times a police officer has come into my life, he or she has not improved the situation. I really try to avoid encountering them and am usually fortunate enough that this is easy, as I'm a quiet old white lady.

I don't understand why a police office told Henry Louis Gates to step outside of his own house when he had proof that Gates lives there.

I don't understand why a police officer told a crazy boy standing outside my house shouting at me to go into my house.

A long time ago, I got away from an abusive boy. I'll call him a boy, even though he was of age, because he wasn't a man. I got an apartment with my girlfriend. Our names were on the lease. Our names were the only names on the lease, the application, anything.

About six months later he tracked me down. Someone told him where I was living. It was about 40 miles away in a place I'd never lived before, so it took some doing to find me.

He came at night and stood in the parking lot shouting. My apartment was on the second floor. I hollered out for him to go away. So did my girlfriend. Then we turned the lights off and went to our rooms.

He kept shouting that he "just wanted to come in and see me," and a neighbor called the police.

The police came to my door and I told them he didn't live here, I didn't want to see him, and I never asked him to come here. I must not have been clear enough.

The police went down and invited him in. I opened my door to the police again and he lunged at me. In the process, he knocked down, hit, and kicked the officers and broke a lamp and a table (my girlfriend's) and a bookcase (mine).

They finally got him into handcuffs and dragged him out.

A time before that, when we lived in the same house, he assaulted me and neighbors called the police. They advised me to "patch things up."

Now, this was a long time ago, and I'm given to understand things don't go like that anymore, oh, no.

Am I entitled to say that the police behaved stupidly? Or do they have some really smart plan that I am too stupid to understand?

You might say I behaved stupidly ever getting involved with such a person. You might say Mr. Gates behaved stupidly bringing the officer's mama into things. You might say a young man behaves stupidly by walking in a certain neighborhood after dark. You might say that "stupid" is a bad word and people in high places ought not to use it about anyone.

Whatever. But those who say what happened to Gates "would have happened to anyone"? Well, that's just plain ignorant.

Et tu, Brute: Sportswriter Christine Brennan says Erin Andrews' attractiveness is guilty of "encouraging the complete nutcase to drill a hole in your room?" That's just sad. That is just sad. I'm just worn out.

I'm going to go put on a short skirt and have a margarita, but hey, I'll have my big strong husband there to protect me. And then I'm going to go see The Hurt Locker, by Kathryn Bigelow, who you know, she sure has some pretty hair and legs, why is she out showing them off??? Doesn't she get it?

With all my love forever,
Princess Boneslave Hottie McSlutmuffin

Photo: Madame Directress.