Will Not Brake

Sometimes it's worth coming to work just to read the police reports.  Yesterday I ended up crawling around under my desk, due to a missing evidence DVD.  Instead of the DVD (which I found later in my car's CD player), I found an old police report that had somehow escaped my tidy drawer.

The paragraph circled in red reads: 

"I then proceded to the assault in progress running code (emergency overhead warning lights activated).  While traveling west on Ford-Wellpinit Road at a high rate of speed of approximately 80 mph or more I encountered a large Porky Pine in my lane of travel."

(Just in case you think I mis-typed some of the above:)

"At approximately one hundred feet or less I attempted to scare the animal off the road way by using the siren/horn.  This attempt failed causing the animal to stop and look directly at me, as it appeared to stand up."

"I struck the animal with my patrol car and it seemed to be stuck under my vehicle for a short distance then it became free from my vehicle. I advised dispatch of the collision and continued to monitor my gauges, which did not indicate any signs of serious damage."

No, Mr. True Purr, I'm fairly certain Mr. Pine got away.

SIGNS YOU'RE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT

While I was crawling around under my desk, a friend came into my office, to make sure I hadn't completely lost it. I showed her the Porky Pine story, which reminded her that she had recently found some old papers stuck in the back of a drawer.

This first picture is a sign her 9-year-old daughter (now in graduate school) drew while waiting for her mom's first jury verdict. The sign reminded me when when my own (then six-year-old) daughter came into the house crying after a walk with a friend and the friend's dad.   She told me that they had seen a man offering to work because he didn't have any money. (I wanted to ask, Exactly why do you think I go to work?) She said that the friend's dad told her that the man was offering to work because he was poor, and didn't have enough money to buy food and clothes for his family. (Or he needed to fuel his meth habit, I refrained from adding.) 

Figuring that this was a moment a good parent would capitalize on, I said, "It's true--some people are poor and don't have enough money to have a home or feed their families."  Then, feeling a bit righteous, "You know, a big part of my job is to help poor people."

"Yeah," she said, crossing her arms, "When they kill other people!"

My friend's daughter, a more mature age eight, had a precocious understanding of the beauty of the words "not guilty" and "jail break":

Next is an after-school project made by the same gal's son, then 8, with the theme, "Things I Like." On first glance, the work seems, while adorable, fairly typical--"My pet bird is a parakeet," and "In my free time I like to play with my friends and play soccer," and "The thing I like about school is math because I like to do it."  But the pink corner is worth checking out:

"The Thing I like about myself, I'm not a Republican."