View from the cop: Crime & punishment
View from the Cop is moving to a new site on Wordpress. Blogger Steve Rose of the Sandy Springs Police Department gives his take on crime, offers safety tips and give his weekly picks from the police blotter. Follow Steve Rose to the new blog site.
AJC.com > Metro > View from the cop > Archives > 2007 > December > 18
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
The art of conversation…with animals, cultists and maybe even someday with teens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Recently I had a conversation with some girl who introduced herself as “Moon.”
In my experience, having lived in California during the early 70’s, conversations with someone named “Moon” probably didn’t involve math or intense political content but the word “Universe” would be used over a dozen times.
True to form, this conversation went in the following direction: “Someday we’ll be able to communicate with animals.” It was out of nowhere.
It went that quick.
“Hi. Nice evening.”
“Yes, lovely.”
“Wow, it’s never going to rain is it?”
“Doesn’t look like it—you know, some day we’ll communicate with animals.”
“Of course. Excuse me, Waiter?—another round.”
This was a harmless social setting so I was up for the entertainment.
There is nothing I hate more than predictable conversations, the ones that you know what they’re going to say before they say it? It’s brutal. I would rather listen to someone’s conspiracy theory about aliens than yet another affirmation that Vick is a (%$#) and now Petrino is a (@#&%). (I know, I know!!) In other words, conversation is best when you have to think about it a little. Sometimes “off the wall” is very enjoyable. It’s the opposite of an IBM Christmas party.
One of my most enjoyable conversations happened about 20 years ago when some young girl came to the door and wanted money for her religion, which I had never heard of and one that I suspected she had only recently been introduced to. The whole thing smelled like some half-baked attempt at a cult. I suspected this because it was based around asking me for money some ten seconds into her speech.
She was probably all of 19. Her hand-out material was made from a second-rate copier. I was, in those days, working runaways and youth drug investigations and had become very comfortable in conversation with kids who were influenced about something just enough to talk as if they were very knowledgeable about it. I found that the more you listened the better the chance they would suddenly realize “Hey wait a minute, I’m full of (#%$&)!!”
As I expected, this girl asked me about my religious beliefs. I told her that my beliefs were not as important as hers since it was she who came to my door to convince me to financially support hers. Therefore, I wanted to her about her beliefs and why I should adopt them. (This is known as the basic “turnaround” response.)
We talked about God and the Devil, and how I was sure the Devil made the American League adopt the designated-hitter rule, and how I chose to live, opposed to how she chose to live her life in this new found way. She pointed out that I had conformed to my luxuries of my home and comfortable life. I wanted to, but hesitated, telling her that my home was less than 1400-hundred square feet and I was working three extra jobs to make the payments on it.
I went from thinking that I wanted her to leave and leave now, to actually enjoying listening to her and watching her try to rationalize my opinion compared to hers. We actually had a nice conversation until about a half-hour later when my then wife, who had been down the street, returned to the house and made scary evil faces at me.
I told the young lady that I enjoyed talking with her but that I thought she was in some made-up, half-baked cult and to prove it, I asked her to tell the leader of her group that I had convinced her to take a vow of celibacy and then see how long it was before she was kicked out. I gave her my card. She read the card and was floored that I was a police officer. My then-wife was floored that I would give this girl a card, meaning to her, “Call me sometime,” and I was floored that I gave her my card in front of my then-wife given all the explaining I would have to do to get out of trouble.
A couple of months later the girl sent me a letter telling me that she left the group and returned to Illinois where she was from. It seems that getting high was part of the religious experience with the group. She didn’t comment on the celibacy angle.
Having daughters and knowing how the male semi-brain works, my standard lecture to young girls was always the same: “You should take a vow of celibacy!”
Anyway, how this ties into “Moon” and conversation content? I guess my point is that even if you’re off the wall, there are people like me who won’t dismiss it so quickly. Even if it’s for my entertainment, I usually let someone get their theory, as whacky as it is sometimes, out there.
Moon said that now we can communicate with monkeys. She said we should be able to bridge the communications gap to other animals in due time. She asked me what I thought about it. I told her that I hoped so and if we do, someday, maybe we’ll be able to communicate with teenagers. She seemed confused.
There’s still so much work ahead of us.
