Hardly Relevant

Um yeah...so

Where to begin.....The last few weeks have packed a lot of crap into a very small space that I haven't been able to digest just yet, so I'll give you a thumbnail of my absence. First off, I'm confident that you get the idea with regard to what I was attempting to do by illustrating some of the anti-U.S. stuff in the Canadian media. It's real, and it's probably not going away anytime soon. If you remain unconvinced, leave a message and I'll send you all you can handle. And that's all I have to say about that....

Now as I said, the last few weeks have been fast and furious and I'm still not too sure what to make of it, but here it goes...I had a very short career with an un-named (for now) airline, that evaporated shortly after they learned that I have been living in Canada for the last 9 months. This is relevant in that the Government of the United States and more specifically the FAA and DHS have rules that prohibit federal contractors, which said airline is, from hiring employees who have not lived in the US for the last five years consecutively. Here's the rub, I had already received my security pass from them when they pulled me, very indignantly, into an office and told me that I shouldn't have it and that I would be quite literally, on the next plane out. Went something like this, "ah sorry, but we didn't realize that you had lived in Canada, we can't keep you without a waiver, and since we're not sure that we'll get one, Rocco here from Corporate Security will take you back to the hotel where you'll check out and make your way to the airport, your flight leaves in two and a half hours, we'll be in touch". I sincerely hope that none of you ever have to suffer that kind of degrading and humiliating crap from your employer. I mad, and I think that's pretty justifiable. Moreover, I'm not a vindictive guy, but I'm mulling over weather or not I want the proverbial pound of flesh. I'm open to suggestion....

And the hits keep on coming.....I lost my uncle Bob to cancer. He bravely battled it for years, and finally it just got to be too much. But it didn't beat him. He was the kind of guy who lived his life his way and no damn cancer was going to dictate the final score. It's odd how people come into and leave our lives. I surely don't remember the first time I saw my uncle, and I ashamed to say that I don't remember the last either, but at the end of the day, I don't think that's what matters. I think what I was supposed to take with me was the impression that he made on me when I was a young kid and into my adolescence. He was a cop for a long long time, and it was in no small part that the image of him in his shiny black and white influenced me to go into police work. When I was much younger, I used to go to the farm house that he and my aunt lived (along with my six, yes six) cousins after school. I would sit on the bus hoping that he hadn't come home for lunch yet so that I could see him in his uniform and marvel at the big POLICE lettering on the doors, and I was very disappointed when I missed his stop. Later, when I was a little older, I would find any excuse to drop by the police station to visit him when he was a lieutenant. I remember him telling me "you're too smart to do this stuff...you need to take the federal tests". I put his words in the back of my mind, but what I didn't tell him was that I wanted to do real cop stuff, real police work, like he and several of my cousins did. They were real cops, who faced real danger everyday, and that's what I wanted. Early, very early, in his career he was kidnapped during a traffic stop. His abductors threatened to kill him several times while they held him, and ultimately let him go after realizing that they didn't have too many options if they wanted to see another sun rise. I often thought about how he must have felt during that time, and the bravery that got him through it. Every time I put on my uniform, I felt the weight of that precedent on my shoulders, and it was a welcome weight. I had an expectation to uphold, and I would be damned if I would disappoint. I like to think that I didn't, and I tried very hard to be the cop that he was, never forgetting that I was there to protect and serve the public, not to harass and intimidate. I hope he knows that I did my best, and often in his shadow, it was and still is an awful big one.

I'll be updating a little more frequently, its therapeutic right now. Check back often....

posted by Hardly Relevant @ 10:25 AM