Page 488 - NIXBOOK

filthy drug addict I felt better after wiping my hand off on the ground as soon as he left, to the great amusement of a citizen
watching me.
For two of my houses, I had fences and gates across the driveway. Fake security cameras were also utilized, and I always, always
locked my car whenever I parked it anywhere. Garage sales or yard sales at my house were of course out of the question; I didn’t
like the idea of random weirdos walking onto my property and looking around at anything I had in my garage and noting what
kind of door locks I had, or if there were security sensors visible or absent, etc.

I don’t give money to “homeless” beggars on street corners. Because I’ve seen too many who weren’t actually homeless. I knew
one local guy in his late 20’s, a heroin junkie who certainly looked homeless but he lived with his grandmother in town, and she
even fed him. He didn’t have a job. Too lazy. But every other day or so he’d trudge over to a busy intersection and hold up a
cardboard sign that read “ANYTHING HELPS” and every once in a while somebody passing by in a car would hand him some
cash. Thinking that they were helping him out. What they were really doing was encouraging him to not get a real job. And the
money he got went straight to feed his addiction, not food or rent. Just about every homeless person I ever met was too lazy to
get a real job. Yes, a lot of them had mental problems of all kinds, but they were also lazy. And I don’t reward laziness. Especially
with cash.

I had way, way more than my share of nighttime bad dreams in which my starring role was Me, as a Police Officer. Not too often,
but usually a couple a month, that I would remember. Fortunately I was almost always able to wake myself up before things got
too bad in my dreams. As for other police related dreams in which I was on the job, in uniform as a Professional Problem Solver
and/or as a highly experienced, trained, professional and authorized Emergency Vehicle Operator, those were usually several
per week. Sigh. At least though, I can report that in 99 percent of my police related dreams when I was dreaming of doing police
stuff, I was the one winning the fights or the chases. But I still hated every single one because even when they were boring police-
themed dreams, I had a very long list of other things I’d rather be dreaming about. So I made a concerted effort to not to try and
remember my stupid dreams. If anybody ever invents a dream exchanged program, I’ll gladly participate; I know there a plenty
of folks out there who would like to pretend they’re cops. To this day, I still have an average of SEVERAL police-related dreams
PER WEEK, that I know of/can remember. I’ve resigned myself to that this is probably going to be a permanent condition,
because I also still have stupid frequent dreams of being back in the Navy, and I only did that for 3 years active and 3 reserve.
I had to be careful where I got food while in uniform – there were plenty of times when I recognized the guys putting hamburgers
together at Burger King as career criminals or young stupid punks I had recently given tickets to - or even arrested. At any given
time there would be at least one fast food joint in town on the ‘Do Not Go To” list because they had known bad guys working
there. I had many coworkers who absolutely refused to eat at most or even all of the local fast food restaurants; one of them for
a good reason; he actually got his burger spit into by the guy making it.

Some officers would put pictures of their family on their patrol car dashboards. Sooner or later they’d learn the hard way that
wasn’t a good idea because it only takes one really drunk or pissed off client in the back seat going to jail to make a comment
like “Hey officer is that a picture of your wife? She sure is pretty…”