Monthly Archives: January 2010

It’s probably some sort of mental tick or deficiency, I just know it. I hum all the time. My father was a hummer, genetic you see. Some say it is a sign of a happy heart,…I tend to think it is one of those threads that I hang on to, just to maintain my sanity.

I was consulting a new client today, he has a pending assault charge, the result of a domestic violence disturbance at his house. He said, “I was drunk, we argued, I punched her.” The guy was reviewing the employment contract, that I have all my clients sign, when I realized I was doing it. I was humming, “Bad Bad Leroy Brown” by Jim Croce. The client looked up at me and we both smiled…..he hired me.

Maybe I am blogging about this today to see if there are anymore like me out there? I have my own internal soundtrack playing at all times, really don’t even need to turn on the car radio. Recently, I have been stuck in 1973. If you check the Billboard Top 100 from 1973, you will be amazed…some really great music.

My mother used to take my sister Junene and I to the Army Navy Store, circa 1973, to shop for jeans. They had the bell-bottom/hip-huggers we loved, in every conceivable color. They were cheap so we could afford to buy several pair each. We would go home and throw them on our bed and start matching up the colors with our tops.

We had orange shag carpet in our room and a black light. Junene had every inch of the walls and ceiling covered with black light posters. We would switch on the turn-table and listen to Santana, Chicago, Cat Stevens, Sly and the Family Stone, and Elton John…just to name a few. We would lay on the floor with our feet stuck up on the bed, reading album liner notes. I was one cool chick in the fifth grade.

That is the about the time I told my mother whatever happened to me in life…I never wanted to get “raked!” She asked what I was talking about? I told her I saw on the news where 3 young girls were “raked” in Dallas. I envisioned a scary man with a large lawn implement, lurking in our front shrubs.

I used to play touch football with all the neighborhood kids. We would come home, throw our books on the kitchen table, and run out of the house. No childhood obesity to worry about in those days. If we weren’t playing football, we were riding our bikes…constantly. I had a red Schwinn with a banana seat, of course. My friend, Rod, and I disassembled the swing set in my backyard and used the long metal rod supports for front-fork extenders. We made a standard bicycle into an “Easy Rider” chopper in short order. Then of course, you had to attach a playing card to the front wheel spokes, with a clothes pin, to add just the right audio for our cruises on Oak Street.

The neighborhood was abuzz one summer when a new restaurant, we had never heard of before opened, called “Pizza Inn,” on Pipeline Road. A tall kid, with sandy hair came knocking one day and my mother answered the front door. He was handing out coupons for one free, small, pizza..trying to get the locals to try the new hang-out in town. My mother asked the kid if he was tired and he responded affirmatively. She said, “If I give you five bucks, you can quit for the day. Just give me that stack of coupons and no one will be the wiser.” We ate pizza that summer like nobody’s business….my mother made a different kid go in each time and pick up the goods. She figured out a seven man rotation would help us elude detection….it worked.

We had a driveway that was on an steep incline. My father would arrive home every day about 6pm and park his 1968 tan Cadillac Deville. Invariably, he would forget to set the emergency brake and the car would slide down the drive, cross the street and wind up in our neighbor’s front yard. This happened at least 5 times, never once hitting the neighbor’s house, always settling down nicely right up against their shrubs. They had a sense of humor about it…one evening my father pulled up to find a 2 ft by 2 ft sign in the neighbor’s yard. It read, “Reserved Parking, Jim Only.” He walked across the street, and ripped the sign out of the yard, embarrassed.

I was standing on the sidewalk, playing with with my Clackers that evening. You remember that toy with the two acrylic balls, on rope tethers that you smashed together? They were taken off the market after several kids Clackered themselves right into brain-damage. My father walked past me, threw the sign in the trash can, and proceeded into the house…..I think I heard him humming.

Have you ever seen the movie, “Rudy?” If not, I highly recommend it. It was released in 1993 and stars Sean Astin, very inspirational. It tells the true story of a young man’s dream to play football for Notre Dame, against all odds…and I mean ALL odds.

Mid-way through the movie, you witness the pivotal scene where Rudy gets a letter, for the fourth semester in a row, from the Notre Dame Admissions office. Three rejections have preceded it and Rudy nervously sits on a park bench, holding the unopened letter.

I sat in a dark movie theater one afternoon and watched this movie alone. As I watched the movie unfold and with it, Rudy’s dream…..it touched a nerve. I was a police officer and had reached the rank of sergeant, supervising an entire shift, composed of all men. It dawned on me that I was not happy, I was 32 years old and had abandoned my dream.

My path to get to this moment of clarity was quite different from what you would expect. I have written, in earlier posts, that I thought about being a cop as a child, but I started college as a pre-med major. I wanted to be a doctor until my junior year when I hit organic chemistry….the law, the law sounded good at that point, my professor agreed!

I worked my way through Texas Woman’s University by working at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. You know the parking booths that take your money as you exit? I worked the midnight shift there in the early 80s. I would sit in the booth and do my homework, with minimal interruptions, from scant motorists. I would leave the job at 7 a.m. and travel to Denton for day classes, sleeping in the evenings.

A funny thing happens when all the forces in the world align for you….Kismet they call it. Switching to criminal justice as a junior and picking up a Constitutional law-book was THE moment of Kismet for me. Like taking a deep breath and truly tasting sweet air for the first time. No wonder I sucked at organic chemistry!

I spent countless nights in the toll booth, with a small heater, blowing stale warm air at my face, as I studied. I loved all the work that my professors threw at me. It didn’t matter if it was a paper on adult corrections or modern law enforcement…I always finished wanting more. I didn’t think about being a police officer at that point, law school was the goal.

After 3 years of motorists bitching about parking fees and inhabiting my own claustrophobic cell, I left DFW Airport. My sister owned a deli, in a suburb of Fort Worth, and I dropped in one day for a sandwich. I overheard two cops, in the next booth, discussing a 911 dispatcher opening at their department. I applied that day and got the job the following week. So long motorists, say hello 40 foot tall Jesus!

Yes, I said hello 40 foot tall Jesus. On the first week on the job, I handled a four fatality, car accident and Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller was a regular caller to the department and liked to talk about seeing Jesus in her backyard. I played along with her, she seemed to like that. No use in filing charges on an eighty-nine year old woman, for 911 abuse, just because she liked to chat it up with the big guy.

I was a dispatcher for about 12 months, then the department sent me to the police academy. I finished police training and my B.S. in Criminal Justice in close proximity. I decided to be a cop after listening to one year of people having all the fun on the other end of my radio transmissions. That and reading the atrocious police reports that came across my desk to type. Good grief, where did these guys go to school? I thought, “I could do this job, I could write a better report than this!!”

I worked in about every capacity you can, on my way to becoming a patrol sergeant. I gained my stripes, and war stories with hard work…..all because I didn’t want to sit in a parking booth or type other people’s reports….but my dream was fading.

I took a week vacation and took the law school entrance exam. What is the problem with that I asked myself? Take it and see how you measure up… go from there. My grade point average in under grad was not pristine. Lack of sleep was not something that made me aspire to graduating with “summa cum laude” after my name.

Was law school something I could even think about at this time? I had a good paying position, could I walk away to chase a dream? My score came back competitive, but it didn’t send me doing cartwheels in my yard. Time to load up my gear and go to work…. my dream was placed nicely in an old shoe box, along with my test report.

Two years passed until the day I found myself sitting in that dark theater watching Rudy with his fourth letter. He opened it up and read the words, “we are pleased to accept…”
The good news sends him sprinting to go tell his dad about his acceptance to Notre Dame. I won’t ruin the rest of the movie for those of you yet to see it, but Rudy woke me up.

A new law school had opened up in my home town and became my focus. I owned a home and could not feasibly pick up and move out-of-town. My attempt to get into law school would ride on one application. If it was truly meant to be for me…surely they would accept me. I was wrong. The rejection letter was received in quick turn-around. I imagined the admissions board passing my packet around and sharing a good laugh at my expense. I imagined 20 years of law enforcement and an unfulfilled dream.

Even though it was a new law school, they routinely got about 2000 applicants each year for a class that would be approximately 220. Mind you these applicants are not under-achievers…a lot of them do have those Greek honors after their names, getting in would not be easy.

I grew another year older and continued to chase bad guys every night. The time rolled around to try it again and I put together another application packet. One of the requirements of the law school was for each applicant to write a letter expressing why they feel they should be accepted. What do you think I wrote? If you guessed a war story, you would be correct.

I poured out my heart, I wrote about my friend Officer Ross getting shot and my participation in the arrest of the shooter. I wrote about my beginnings and how I found my way to criminal law….I wrote about my profound desire to become an advocate for others….then I waited.

I collected my mail that day and noticed the return address of the law school. My hands started shaking as I walked to my backyard. I sat down on a lawn chair and started watching the trees as they swayed in the breeze. I laughed a nervous laugh remembering Rudy on the park bench. Well, look at me…no movie music in the background this time. I feared my dream would float away, on that same breeze, with a second rejection.

I ripped the envelope and saw the words I had longed to read….”we are pleased to offer you a seat in the next class…!!”

I would like to tell you that I went running off down the street, as the music crescendoed, and the credits rolled or that I had a vision of a 40 foot tall Jesus…but that did not happen…this was reality folks, come on!!

I did run around the backyard yelling and crying like a happy fool for a full five minutes. And then a couple of days later I drove out to the DFW airport. I drove from the north end to the south, a fifty cent fee at that time. I gave the girl who took my ticket a fifty-dollar bill, told her to keep the change, and told her to never give up on her dreams. She looked at me like I was a freak and opened up the gate for my exit….she shoulda seen the movie.

Long before people knew me to be queer, they found me to be sporty. A “sporty girl” in the 1970s was basically code for being a queer girl. This was a time when Martina Navratilova hadn’t yet come out of the closet. I found it funny then, and quite hysterical now that she had to come out at all. She had bigger biceps than the middle linebacker on my high school football team. Martina was indeed, a sporty girl.

Anyway, sporty girls played every game there was and were busy during all seasons. I was in two basketball leagues in the winter, played on the high school volleyball team in the fall, the spring meant track and the summer was all about softball.

I actually was on a state championship softball team in 1980 and was picked all-state at first base two years in a row. You should of chuckled though at the aforementioned reference to the track team. Most people think of sprinters and jumpers when you talk track. When you are 5’11” and went right from size 6x to 16…..you throw the shot-put.

I sucked at throwing the shot-put. So, thankfully for you, this blog is not about track or any sport at all. Now, we can get to the 1978 Mercury Bobcat.

It was my first car, brand spanking new. I have told you before, I was spoiled and this is further evidence of that. My father died in 1976 and my mother re-married to a man named Lawrence. He didn’t hurt for cash and neither one of them wanted to tote me around to a million practices and games…biff, bang, boom, new car.

I didn’t get to pick the car, with the money goes the control. I wanted a maroon Chevy Camaro with a rear spoiler. Why did they buy me the Bobcat, Mercury’s answer to the Ford Pinto? It resembled the Pinto except it had a front grill that was on steroids. Blowing up after rear-end collisions would also have been a good argument for the future attorney….but we didn’t know that back then. The Camaro would have launched a 10th grader’s popularity into the stratosphere!

I had turned 16 in December of 1977, passed the driving test and received my license without a hitch. The Bobcat didn’t land in the driveway until about the first week of March of 78. After a few weeks of driving with my mother, the final examiner, I was released to drive for the very first time………solo.

Independence day was a Monday, I was set to drive to school and back with zero detours. The car was sparkling clean, my school gear was under the hatch-back, the soundtrack from Saturday Night Fever….eight-track, of course….in the deck. Gas? Check. Pop-tart? Check. All clear for accelerating into my motorized future!

The drive to school was uneventful and I pulled into the student parking lot and took my place as a mobile sophomore. After a full day of classes I got my gear and headed to the track for practice.

The big girls that threw the shot-put practiced with the even bigger guys that threw it. So there I was, standing around the concrete square from which we launched those 16- pound balls, with 3 of the offensive linemen from the football team.

As one of the guys spoke to me, he began casually tossing the shot-put he had from one hand and back to the other. I could see his mouth moving, but I was drifting off from the conversation. My mind was on the drive home and what would be my soundtrack.

A shock of pain brought me back to the present moment. The shot-put had missed the big jock’s left paw and had come crashing down on my right foot. A 16-pound ball of steel landing on a human foot, that is standing on concrete….well that, my friends, is what you call a big hurt.

A friend drove my car home that day. The Bobcat sat in the driveway for the next 6 weeks, alone and longing for the Bee Gees. Bones had been broken, nerves had been damaged, and the sport of track and field was in my rear view mirror forever.

Sometimes in life, things come along too easy for you. It takes some sort of challenge for you to fully appreciate an award. After my foot was able to depress the gas pedal again, the Bobcat made a sporty girl proud.