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"Sarge is what happens when you raise a kid without a television." -Senior officer explaining me to a rookie.
"It's easy to understand Rory if you just take it for granted that he was raised by coyotes."- My lovely wife.
I understand that I’m not changing the world. I don’t think, sometimes in my deepest heart of hearts, that
I’m even protecting anyone. I think that I’m part of a huge veil; a group of men and women who deal with one
tiny aspect of this world so that no one else has to admit it exists. That I exist just so that wealthy, fat, state-educated
people can believe that evil is a “quaint notion.” I’m holding one finger in the dike and smiling for the
tourists who believe that it is water on the other side.
I was eighteen and trying to talk a friend into joining the judo team at OSU. Robby was short, strong and had an incredibly
devious mind. I thought he’d be perfect for competition judo. We sat in his living room, drinking across a messy coffee
table. He was on the couch, I was opposite him in a chair.
“Nah.” He said.
“You’d love it: it’s fun, good exercise and good self-defense.”
“Nah. I’d never need any of that martial arts bullhockey.”
“What do you mean?”
Robby gave his snotty little grin, “That’s for stupid people. I don’t need it.”
He’d pissed me off just a little. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Rory, only stupid people get into fights. Only the really stupid ones think that fighting skill will get ‘em
out. The smart guy always wins.”
“Bull. What if I attacked you right now?” (You all see where this is going, right?)
“Go ahead.”
I stood up and the little weasel kicked the corner of the coffee table into my shin. When I started the one-legged hopping,
he used a pillow from the couch and smacked me with it, catching me perfectly off balance. I went down.
Robby snickered, “Told you. Fighting is for stupid people.”
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I'm just an ordinary, average guy.
Remember this- that the fair play and good sportsmanship you learned as a child were predicated on two fairly matched
people who wanted to be there, not some drugged up freak with a knife and an officer answering a call.
At CNT (Crisis Negotiation Team- sometimes called Hostage Negotiators) Cecil, one of the instructors recommended reading
books on salesmanship. In the intro to this book the author stated that everyone, every single person in the world is engaged
in selling something. No matter if you were building a car in a factory, performing medicine or changing oil.
I thought, “Bullshit. I’m a jail guard. I’m not selling jack.”
Shortly after there was an extremely stupid and crazy old man who very much wanted to fight five times his weight in officers.
It took about twenty minutes to talk him into going along with the process. It was then that I realized I am selling something,
a product called ‘not getting your ass beat’ and it is very hard to sell to some people.
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