May 2020 – Deep Dark Thoughts

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Early in my career, I remember several of the older guys telling me to, “work smarter, not harder.” I used to think that was just code the old lazy bastards in the department used to try to get the rest of us to slow down. Turns out, that’s not always true.

I mean, sometimes it is. But not always.

I was working a day shift as a patrol officer back around 1997, when an incident during a traffic stop gave me a new appreciation for the expression.

We had a new officer working on our shift at that time. For the sake of brevity, let’s just refer to him as Officer Newguy. That morning during briefing, the sergeant on the shift told us that our Field Training Officer (FTO) was off sick and Newguy had no one to ride with. I was not an FTO, but I was the senior officer working the shift that day, so the sergeant said the trainee was going to ride with me.

I told the sergeant I would be happy to take the trainee. I said, “I can use the extra five percent FTO training pay. Thanks, Sarge.”

The sergeant stared at me for a long moment, then asked, “What?”

“Well, if I’m going to be working as a training officer, I just assumed I would also get paid as a training officer. Seems fair.”

The sergeant just stared at me some more.

“I’m not getting paid, am I?” I said.

“You’re not getting paid,” the sergeant agreed.

That was how the day started. That was the working harder part. The working smarter part came later.

A couple of hours into the shift, Officer Newguy was driving our patrol car and he asked if he could make a traffic stop. The car in front of us had a brake light out and he wanted to stop it and talk to the driver. I told him to go ahead.

The officer turned on the overhead lights and stopped the offending vehicle.

The driver of the car was a kid, about seventeen years old. He explained he was driving his mom’s car and didn’t know the brake light didn’t work. He apologized and handed us his driver’s license and vehicle registration. He was unable to find any insurance paperwork in the glovebox and told us so.

Newguy and I returned to our car and I had him call dispatch on the radio and check the kid’s driver’s license information. We discovered the license was suspended because the driver had recently gotten into an accident and he did not have any car insurance. This wasn’t a huge deal, but it was still technically a misdemeanor crime for the kid to be driving a car without a valid license.

Officer Newguy went back to talk to the kid. He had the driver step out of his car, then told him that his license had been suspended.

Before the sentence was completely out of the officer’s mouth, the kid was running down the street looking like a blond version of Forest Gump with the bullies running after him. Newguy took off after the kid like a dog takes off after a squirrel.

I tried to tell Newguy not to chase the kid, but they were both already too far away to hear me. The last I saw of Newguy was a blue uniform climbing over a fence into someone’s backyard.

I got a second glimpse of him when he popped up just long enough to hop another fence, but I knew they were too far away for me to ever hope to catch up with them.

Foot pursuits can be dangerous. The driver was just a kid, but you never know when someone is carrying a weapon. Besides, just jumping fences can cause an injury. I was about to use the radio to tell Officer Newguy to stop and come back to the patrol car, but Newguy beat me to it.

“One in custody,” he announced on the air.

“Bring him back to the patrol car,” I responded, then waited for Newguy to return with his prize.

After Newguy placed the handcuffed kid in the back of our car, he looked at me with a huge smile on his face. He was sweaty, muddy, and had a brand-new hole in his shirt from a nail sticking out of one of the fences he climbed.

“I got him! I caught him trying to get inside a house about a block away from here.”

I held up the kid’s driver’s license, which I had been holding during the entire foot pursuit. “Was he trying to get into this house?” I asked, pointing at the address printed on the front of the license.

The smile on Newguy’s face disappeared. “Uh … yeah.”

“We stopped this kid a block away from his house. Where else was he going to run to? You know, we could have just walked over there and knocked on the door after he took off. Or even better, tow his car and call his mom. Her information is on the registration.”

Newguy was not happy. He was even less happy when I told him to write the kid a ticket and let him go.

“He’s not going to jail?” Newguy asked me, incredulous.

“It’s a traffic misdemeanor. We’re not wasting everybody’s time driving him to the jail.”

“But he ran!”

“And you were silly enough to go running after him. That doesn’t change anything.”

I patted Newguy on the shoulder, and for the first time in my career I got to utter those words of wisdom to someone else. “Use your head, rookie. You have to work smarter, not harder.”

And I know exactly what Newguy was thinking at that moment when I said it.

“You lazy bastard.”

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That Magical Time of Year

Winter must truly be a magical season, but I don’t mean that in a good way.

Every year in the late fall, I clear out weeds from the garden and orchard, I put down fertilizer for all the trees and bushes I have planted over the past decade, as well as trimming and pruning those plants so they come back healthy in the spring. I double check sprinkler valve timers to be sure they have fresh batteries and are functioning properly. And I spend hours checking miles of hoses, sprinkler heads, and drip lines to make sure there are no clogs or leaks.

Then comes that magical few months we call winter. Winter absolutely must be magical because somehow, every spring, just like magic despite all my planning and hard work, I find dead trees surrounded by acres of weeds, non-functioning valve timers, and broken drip lines.

And the chores begin all over again.

Abra-effing-Cadabra!

This year was no different. I spent several weeks recently identifying all the broken stuff and trying to fix it. I have cut down three dead trees and replaced two of them. (The third one may grow back on its own, so I’ve adopted a wait and see policy with that one.) I have spent hours mowing, spraying and pulling weeds and have only just begun to see progress. And, I discovered several broken drip lines throughout the yard, two broken sprinkler heads, and three valve timers that have decided to retire early.

Buying replacement parts has also become quite the endeavor this year. My choices are to go to a nursery and bump into every other stir-crazy, shut-in trying to find any excuse to be out of the house right now, or go online to order parts and wait out the prolonged delivery times. Personally, I prefer the online route, but that’s only because I dislike interacting with people. Especially large crowds of people that should be staying home instead of constantly popping up in my way.

My latest project involved the three dead valve timers. It only took two weeks to complete what should have been a five-minute job. I started out by going to each of the timers and checking battery function. Two of the dead timers came right back to life with a fresh infusion of double-A goodness. The third one was not so cooperative. When I opened it up, it immediately leaked some kind of grey and brown crud all over my hand.

That timer was all the way dead and needed to be replaced.

I checked my toolbox and the cabinet where I keep spare sprinkler parts in the garage but could not find a spare timer. I was sure I had one, but I guess winter had one more magic trick up her sleeve and made it disappear.

Next, I went online and ordered a new timer. I decided to order two of them because I figured I should keep an extra one on hand for when (not if) the next volunteer in the yard decided to call it quits. Then I spent the next two weeks hand watering all the plants on that particular drip line until the new timer arrived.

With a new valve timer in hand, I trudged out to the well pump to turn off the water to our yard. Have you ever noticed that one project often turns into two or three?

As soon as I turned the water off, I noticed that the water pressure in the lines was low. This happens every year or so when the water filter gets gummed up and starts interfering with water flow.

To check the filter, I unscrewed the filter housing and was instantly assaulted by a geyser of slimy black water. It was just like the end of the log ride at Disneyland, that is if the log ride was dropping you into a vat of stagnant sewage and it smelled like a humid locker room.

I slogged back to the garage, dripping and dry heaving, to look for spare filters. Fortunately, I had a spare set. I swapped out the old filters for the new ones, made a mental note to order some new filters for next time, then trudged back to the front yard to replace the sprinkler valve timer. (You know, the original reason I was even out there.)

After replacing the dead timer, I decided to turn on the sprinklers to check the water pressure. I wanted to see how they were working after I had put the new water filters in the well pump. One of the sprinkler heads started gushing water from somewhere two feet underground.

Apparently, the water pressure was excellent. The sprinkler lines? Not so much.

Back to the garage I went to get a shovel and a new sprinkler head.

Despite all the fun things I got to do that day, my favorite part of the day came when I took the extra valve timer I had ordered and decided to put it somewhere in the garage where it would be easily found when I needed it. The way things were going, I figured that day might come sooner rather than later. I decided that the best place for it would be a storage cabinet right next to my toolbox.

I opened the cabinet and placed the new timer on a shelf…

Right next to three other brand-new, never been used, still in the box, valve timers.

Abra-effing-Cadabra!

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Teacher Appreciation

Last week was teacher appreciation week in the United States. It is a week designated for parents and students to show their teachers that they are thankful for the hard work and dedication educators display every day of the year. This year, perhaps more than any before, it is important to acknowledge the lengths that teacher are going to educate the next generation.

My wife is a principal at an elementary school, and she and her VP (that’s “Vice Principal” in the education lingo) decided they wanted to do something special to thank the teachers at their school. They printed up yard signs that said, “An Outstanding Educator lives here.” The idea was to thank the individual teacher and to let their entire neighborhood know what a great job they were doing.

It was a nice idea. It was also a lot of work.

This would have been a much easier endeavor if teachers all lived together in one great big community with one massive communal lawn. Although it may surprise some of you to learn this, they are free to live in any neighborhood they choose. I’m not sure who allowed that to happen, but it is too late to fix the problem now.

They are among us. One might even be right next door to you, and you would have no idea.

At least until my wife stuck a sign on their lawn.

Anyway, last week my wife asked me if I would help her drive around town and post signs. She thought the job would go much more smoothly if one of us drove while the other jumped out and planted the signs. I reluctantly agreed.

Immediately after I said I would go, EM1 told her mother, “I’ll go with you.”

My wife said, “Great! Now, dad doesn’t have to help.”

EM1 paused for a moment. She seemed confused. Then she said, “Don’t you want dad to go with you?”

EM1 looked at me next and said, “Dad, don’t you want to go with mom?”

“Not really. You can go,” I told her.

The look on EM1’s face made me think of a poker player that had just gone all in on a bad hand, and someone had just called her bluff. She retreated to her room, muttering something about having a lot of work to do, so she couldn’t leave the house at the moment.

I guess dad was going after all.

I looked at EM2, but she just said, “Nope!” then lied down on the couch and pulled a blanket over her head. At least she was more honest about her feelings than her sister.

My wife and I headed out the door. We met up with her VP at a nearby gas station and split up a list of addresses. We ended up with 25 names and an equal number of yard signs. Looking at the stack of signs in the back of my truck, I calculated that we were going to be driving around town for somewhere between 3 hours and three weeks, depending on traffic lights.

I must have had a shocked look on my face, because my wife just shrugged and held up a piece of paper.

“Here’s the first address on the list. Go there.”

The rest of the day, we drove from house to house, sticking signs in people’s lawns. I drove, while my wife grabbed signs and ran back and forth from the truck. I’m sure we both looked incredibly suspicious to any bystanders that may have happened to see us. My wife would sneak up to a house, stick a sign in the grass, then come running back hunched over like a cartoon burglar because she figured if she made herself as small as possible, nobody would see her. Meanwhile, I would sit in the truck revving the engine like the getaway driver in the middle of a bank heist.

I’m surprised none of the neighbors called the cops when they saw us prowling around. Or maybe they did, and we were just too fast for those flatfoots to catch us. Either way, we managed to elude capture during our daylong crime spree.

My favorite sneaky move of the day was when we were trying to get to a particular home located in a gated community. As we sat in the entryway trying to figure out how to get in, another vehicle pulled up behind us. I turned around and started to drive away, but as soon as I saw the other vehicle go in, I made a quick U-turn and slipped in behind him as the gate was closing again.

At the expense of a little paint on the side of my truck and a few sparks, we got inside the gated community. I don’t even think the other driver noticed my maneuver. He just kept driving.

My wife gave me a look like I was completely crazy for pulling that stunt. I’m used to it, though. She gives me that look a lot. I figure it was her fault for letting me drive. She really should know better by now.

We got the signs delivered and I hope the teachers at my wife’s school liked them. Only minor crimes were committed to accomplish the task, but it is a small gesture of how much the teachers are valued and how far the administration at the school is willing to go to make them feel appreciated.

To any teachers reading this blog, thank you for what you do for us and for our children.

And if the cops show up at your house asking about a grey truck, I would be grateful if you didn’t say anything to them.

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The Morning Routine

These days I’m in a bit of a rut. It seems every morning just blends into the next with nothing to distinguish one part of the week from another. I frequently find myself completely forgetting what day it is, or not noticing the time unless I’m wondering if it’s still too early to pour that first glass of wine.

I pretty much know from moment to moment what I will be doing, because it is exactly what I did the day before. It isn’t exciting, but it is reliable.

Just for fun, let me run you through my typical morning routine.

At 8 AM the alarm on my bedside clock goes off and I am awakened to the sound of country music because I have no idea how to adjust the settings on the radio and I’m too lazy to read the directions that came with the clock. Now, you may wonder why I set an alarm when I have nowhere to go, nothing to do, and all day not to do it. The answer is simple. I have discovered that if I don’t set an alarm, I don’t wake up.

I am likely to go to bed on Monday night and only get up sometime late Thursday afternoon. While I consider this to be a lovely, restful period of time, WebMD seems to think that this is one of the warning signs of clinical depression.

Or cancer. It might also be cancer.

Anyway, to avoid getting cancer, I set my alarm every day.

As soon as I wake up and turn off the alarm, the cat immediately jumps up on the bed and starts to meow, demanding to be petted. At least, I think she is demanding to be petted. I suppose it’s possible she is simply expressing her displeasure that she spent the entire night watching me sleep and yet again, I failed to die. Come to think of it, she does tend to appear a little irritable in the morning.

I choose to believe she wants attention, so I pet her for about five minutes before getting out of bed.

Once I’m up, I throw on sweatpants and a shirt, brush my teeth, and go outside to water the plants on the back patio. I have timers and drip line that automatically water the lawn and surrounding landscape, and it would be very easy for me to set up the patio to do the same thing. I also have more time than I know what to do with each day, so filling and emptying a water can is a good way to take up some of that empty space.

After watering, I come back in the house, sit down at the computer and spend about an hour online checking out my social media accounts. I write a few witty comments that are generally ignored by everybody, check my message folder to make sure that it is still empty, and see if everybody is still spouting hateful political rhetoric every chance they get.

Spoiler: They are.

Social media time is followed by exercise. Every morning at about 9 o’clock, I go out and walk for 4 or 5 miles. The original plan is to walk 2 or 3 miles, but I find once I get outside it is sometimes very difficult to convince myself to go back in the house.

The kids are in there.

I don’t like being trapped in the house with them.

Generally, my daughters don’t like to spend time with me and they avoid me whenever they can. This is a good thing. They are horrible people that don’t clean up after themselves and say really mean things to me because they think it’s funny to hurt my feelings. I blame their mother for this.

I barely talked to them while they were growing up, so it can’t be my fault.

When I do finally go back in the house, I sit down at the computer and check to see if anyone enjoyed my earlier, witty online statements. Usually the answer is no. The only person that reacts to my posts is my wife, and I can feel the pity emanating from the tiny thumbs-up symbol she slaps on each of my comments.

She might as well be patting me on the head and saying, “That’s okay. You keep trying.”

Somewhere around 11 o’clock is when I finally stop torturing myself on social media and get to work writing. This is really the end of the morning, time-wasting routine and the beginning of my day. I spend the rest of my daylight hours sitting in front of the computer trying to create something others might one day enjoy reading.

Well, okay, not the entire time. I occasionally stop to eat, or drink, or watch a movie, or sneak back onto social media, or go work in the yard, or run to the grocery store.

Or lie down on the couch to take a nap.

What I guess I’m saying is: I’m not really all that productive most of the time.

But at least when I take a nap, I always set an alarm.

That way the cat knows when it’s time to jump up and get petted.

Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

And you can follow me on Twitter @gallenwilbanks.