Since when did “to protect and serve” become “to bully and humiliate?”
The only thing that can really make me lose it–my Achilles Heel–is the abuse of power by authority figures. Injustice and unfairness, as much as they terrify me, make me crazy with rage.
When a person grows older and faces all the things that frightened her as a child, she comes to realize that many fears are irrational, rooted in the limited perspective of a child pulling away from an existence defined by utter defenselessness and dependency. I had thought that I had confronted all my major fears and understood the realities/irrationalities of them, until my run-in this weekend with a nice, hick-town police officer who found the courage within himself to bully a defenseless woman on a dark road in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night. Bravo, Mr. Police Man. Your friends must marvel at the size of your cojones.
I have one thing to say to him, before I write an official complaint letter mailed certified to every single person up his chain of command (and believe me, I DO have the time and tenacity):