PTA Cop

I spent the morning with a PTA dude who had actually shot somebody. Not at a meeting or anything, not while battling over Book Fair money, but actually while he was on duty as a cop.

He can't do anything anymore, he said. His body barely works since he was in a coma. These are the kind of people that are good to have around, so you realize YOUR use of the words "coma" and "my body hurts" mean actually nothing.

The guy was a highway patrolman. He was by the side of the road, by his cop car, and a drunk driver came barrelling at him. They guy wasn't stopping. I saw his face, he said. He was coming for me, wanted to annihilate the cop. He pulled his gun. The guy rammed into his squad car. He pulled the trigger. The car rammed into PTA cop, and he flew up into a pine tree, breaking both legs, an arm, and he hung suspended by his gun belt from a limb. He woke up 3 months later in a hospital room. The drunk driver, killed.

This is the kind of coffee and donut PTA talk I like to hear at 8 am while we draw signs for the carnival, most of which he misspells and I correct. This is so much better than frilly aprons and starchy hair spray and curled, disapproving eyebrows. This guy can give me the inside scoop to what it's like at the brink of death.

Of course, the first thing I ask is, "If I'm going 80 in a 70 mph zone, will you pull me over, or overlook me?" It's been burning in me.

Turns out he's seen plenty of death and mayhem. In fact, death and mayhem are like his idiot cousins, trailing him around. We haven't actually talked about it yet, because I think he'd probably explain everything very honestly, which is life, and highway driving, are a messy business. Even without firearms.

The closest I've been to death up close was the tedium of my daughter's play last week. My version of excrutiating - bad theater. This guy has seen real death, the kind where no one comes back, and there aren't snacks served at intermission. Which is more dangerous, though? At least with real death, it's over fairly abruptly, versus the living death that is bad theater. Where you walk away and it reeks in you for weeks.

I think PTA Cop needs his own movie. It's like a "Rockford Files" - cop has to remember not to pull gun to shoot balloons at the school carnival. Has to remember to keep his two jobs separate in his mind. Which, he says, is getting harder and harder as he gets older.

Gonna be a helluva carnival, kids.