Chattanooga Pulse

Written by Alex Teach
Tuesday, 25 November 2008 19:39

Standing under the bright cloudless sky, you can see your breath clearly forming with every exhale and your hands, ears and nose fight to finish a race to being most numb. It’s high noon. The streets look more like the set of an apocalyptic zombie movie than a normally thriving business district. Traffic lights cycle and change for vehicles that are not there, and “closed” signs hang askew in every visible window. Even stray animals are eerily absent from the scene, and only two types of people are present for what seems like hundreds of miles: Convenience store clerks and cops.

In its own way, it’s kind of cool. On midnight shifts, the streets are nearly as empty, aside from the errant drunk driver cautiously or recklessly moving about, but under stars and streetlights that is to be expected. During the day? It’s such an abrupt change it leaves you constantly on edge, seeking danger from the few shadows present, and subtly triggering fight-or-flight responses with every drifting piece of litter, no matter how innocuous. I actually enjoy the tension for its own change of pace, despite the difficulty in finding an open restaurant, until all these trains of thought are interrupted by the squawk of a radio and a call for service: A domestic disorder. Ah, yes. All these things put together can add up to only one thing: It must be the holidays.

Although it may be considered a tad harsh at first glance, most cops have developed a “zero tolerance” policy during Thanksgiving and Christmas. All the days in between are the same as any other (save for the spike in property crimes and robberies, because who can resist going from store-to-store without placing a bar of solid gold on their car’s passenger seat and leaving it exposed?), but on the days of the festivities themselves, should you be so dysfunctional that you can’t keep your shit together for ONE day out of the year, and you have to call police into your home…well, someone has to go to the Quiet Room. It’s not personal, mind you. It’s just part of making sure civility still has a place inside civilization, and if you can’t do that on Thanksgiving or Christmas, well-you have forfeited your right to freedom for the day.

Allow me to explain. Like trees succumbing to time and pressure, the Dark Cop Heart takes years to petrify through its constant exposure to society’s bitterness and despair, but at its core is still a seed of service to humanity. As such, the thought of working holidays away from family is not met with eagerness, but at least it is understood. This, however, doesn’t make the cop any happier to be there. You see, the Dark Cop Heart seeks salvation through one of two means for the most part: family and alcohol. On holidays, said heart is denied both and the added conflict to an already embattled organ is simply too much. Like an overheating engine, it must be vented. Add to this a moral imperative to still the lack of discipline in some weary souls, and you have an equation for Aggressively Helping People. And what better definition is there for “policing” than that?

So when Uncle Cousin or Aunt In-law get liquored up and knock over the turkey fryer on Hoppy, the three-legged family dog and send Grandpa Son-in-law into an Ensure-filled rage, or Daddy turns down Mommy’s volume with a fist rather than turning up the TV, something simply has to be done, because such a lack of self-control on sacred days is a sure sign of a benign tumor that must be excised. This isn’t Fire Prevention Week we’re talking about here, folks: this is Thanksgiving and Christmas…and the list we’re checking doesn’t need to be checked twice. It is our belief that “time out” can cure that which a poor upbringing cannot.

That aside, like the legions of employees off for those days, I like to think that maybe the streets themselves enjoy a day off, too. These are days for thanks, for celebrating, and the roads work hard and show wear…and while they are more easily fixed when broken, there is still a kinship, the streets and their police. Both give when needed and are unforgiving when pressed, but are quietly appreciated all the same-until you knock the turkey fryer over Hoppy, anyway.

Enjoy. In moderation, of course.