Showing posts with label language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label language. Show all posts

January 20, 2008

Yesterday's Son


The other evening when I returned home from work, I entered our kitchen to greet my wife and kids. My son remained in our den, consumed by a video game. It’s a rare treat for him to use the Game Cube as we severely limit playing time. I peered at him from the open serve-through and joked, pretending that I am his grandfather and he is my grandson.

“Hey, where’s your dad? I’ve got a few things to say to him.” I said in a gravelly, old man’s tone.

He barely twitched, still engrossed by “Lego Star Wars”.

“Um Dad? You’re my dad,” he said with his characteristic aplomb. He’s used to my teasing, pretending to be an alien, speaking in a made up language, and just plain acting silly. All of that in an effort to make my kids laugh.

Not satisfied with his response, I goaded him some more. “Hey you, in the den; you meet any cute girls lately?”

That was enough to make him lose his focus. For any eight-year-old boy is still in the “girls are stupid” phase, merely talking about girls is enough to cause static in his brain, let alone asking him if they’re cute.

Oh dad, you made me mess up.” He stopped short, set the game on “pause” and then came into the kitchen to say hello.

That little scene, that vignette of pretending to be a grandfather, gave me a chill. I thought about it that night as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep. With any luck, one day I would be a grandpa with a young boy or girl running around our home for a visit, I thought. But that is only a wish, not a plan. As much as we’d like to believe we could arrange the future, we really can’t.

My mind took me back to my own childhood where I, much like everyone else with dreams of growing up and starting a family, would lie in bed at night and imagine what it would be like to be married and have children. Well, it happened. I’m as far away from myself as a boy as I could be both physically and mentally, but the memory persists of the yearning I had to be a happy husband and father.

Somehow I made it. There were no clear-cut steps to becoming a family man. I sort of grew into the mold. The collective mass of scenes which shaped my life from childhood, through my teenage years, to young adulthood, amazingly resulted in me meeting the woman of my dreams and falling in love. That alone is worth celebrating; and, loving her was the easy part. For her to love me back was the surprise.

As far as a plan is concerned, there isn’t one. There is no destiny. All of the life insurance policies, wills, and healthcare proxies in the world are based on performance expectations. We’re supposed to live a long time. We should make a living, put money aside, and prepare for our survivors’ upkeep after we’re gone. The only eventuality is that we’re going to die. In fact, we’re dead already.

Look at the night sky and take in all of the stars, which burned out billions of years ago. Each one is a record of the past, as is our own sun which we view as it was roughly eight minutes ago. There is never a moment when we know what is happening to our very own star. We are always observing the world by the light of a star in the rear view mirror with nothing to guide us but our memories. In a sense, we are walking backwards through life, the eye we possess focused on what we leave behind as we pray that there is terrain where we place our feet next.

I’d like to cast a line to the child in my memories, myself as a young boy, and reel him close and tell him that he did well. He married a gorgeous woman and has two really great kids and he’ll mature into a happy man.

We are not in control of anything. We merely handle ourselves as though we have a vision, or that there is a destiny we search for. The moment I finish typing this piece I’m in store for nothing but the anticipation that I’ll draw another breath. I’ll stand up, go downstairs and eat dinner with that family I imagined over thirty years ago and was fortunate enough to have. Grandchildren? Hopefully, one day an old man will pull me aside when I not expecting it, and whisper in my ear “You did well.”

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December 10, 2007

Perps, Cuffs, and Doughnuts Too


Every profession has one, and that is its own language. Those in the medical, legal and education professions all speak with the jargon of their career field. My former line of work is no different. Cops have a lingo all their own, comprised of legalese, shorthand, and slang. You've heard police say the word "perp" on detective shows for years. Many of you know what a perp is. You do, don’t you? A perp is a perpetrator. That’s slang for suspect. It's easier to say than perpetrator. Another exmple is in New York City, if a cop needs to call on the radio for an ambulance, he asks the dispatcher for a bus. That’s because it’s shorter than calling for an ambulance when time is critical.

Also, there are all of those radio codes cops rattle off, as well as sections of the law and the Patrol Guide which are quoted during the course of a busy tour of duty. Now that I am a writer, I wish to tell many of the stories I have from my experiences “on the job” but I don’t want to bludgeon the reader over the head with cop-speak. It’s confusing and requires a glossary at the end of the story. One other reason I want to take it easy with the police terminology is that it’s boring. Nothing makes a reader want to skim past pages of dialogue and description faster than dousing them with industry-specific or profession-oriented speech. Only the true police buff will sift through a word list and define various phrases and terms used in a police story. My goal is to write for a wide audience and not insult the reader’s intelligence by making the text too simple, and to maintain an aura of realism.

So, when striking a balance with readers and authenticity, I tend to allow the narrator describe details in lay terms rather than have the characters do it talking like "hair bags" (hardened, veteran police officers). It is less confusing to say “The officers climbed into their cruiser to begin their tour of duty", rather than have cop #1 say to cop#2 “You sign out an RMP and I’ll be the recorder.” I can tell already that you’re falling asleep.

In real life scenarios, police in New York City are trained that if they don’t know a radio code, you simply say what you need. If you’re trying to break up a small riot and cannot decide if you want to call a 10-13 or ask for a 10-85 forthwith, just tell Central where you are and that you need backup. Everyone in the whole division will know right away that you’re getting your head handed to you and they’ll fly there “lights and sirens” or even with “hats and bats.” This makes my job as a writer easier when creating scenes where my police characters use the radio because I can realistically have them talk like civilians to the central dispatcher and toss in generic “10” codes which anyone knows, such as “10-4.”

Where my job gets dicey is when my characters are on patrol or hanging around with other cops. So far I’ve gotten around this by limiting my patrol time with my characters and having the narrating “voice” translate the details of a jargon laden conversation. In addition, I’m given to mixing civilians into social settings with the off duty police officers in various scenes to suppress the natural urge of the cops to settle into unfiltered cop-talk. My first foray into blogging about my police experiences seemed to go well judging by the comments I received from the post. I tried to balance what happened with my civilian voice and explain any of the law enforcement tactics and verbiage. The story has been posted for several days now and reactions have been positive. My three novel length police stories, though read by only a small number of select readers, have also been given upbeat reviews. Yet, I feel like it is a lot of work to get the mix of pure police-speak and civilian perspective right.

A true writer, in my opinion, never has an easy job. If it is effortless for me to publish even a blog post, then maybe I'm not doing enough to please my readers. I accept the assignment of relating my police experiences in either fictionalized, novel length works, or blog postings in this space. In fact, while putting together this piece, I was reminded of an incident while working in Manhattan North in the sixth radio division when a/t/p/o, c/v stated that she was struck by unk perp about the head and neck w/blunt inst. Perp fled unk dir. Canvass neg, 32 PCT SQD not. EMS 10/84 C/V RMA. Now that was scary.

November 2, 2007

"I'm Not From Lawn-Guy-Land"


There's a list going around the internet which has been compiled by, added to, and passed around by Long Islanders. This list is called (you guessed it) "You Know You're From Long Island When..." One of my favorite items on that list is "You never realize you have an accent until you leave." This has happened to me, numerous times.

Yes, we do speak funny, and it is typically arrogant of us New Yawkers to think we speak like Harvard law professors. In Florida a few years ago, I took my family to Disney World. At Typhoon Lagoon, I was sitting poolside when my then three year old son began to play with the sand. Actually, he was tossing handfulls of it into the air. I told him to knock it off, and the burly man behind me said something that sounded like "Arf nargle eeg offay ay nad." Huh?

Not wanting to be rude, I smiled in much the same way one does when we don't want to aggitate the man holding the bloody meat cleaver. I ordered my son once more to quit throwing sand in the air or I'd bury him in it (or words to that effect).

The big hairy guy with the marbles in his mouth walked over. He was with his family, a wife, two little ones (boy and girl) who were playing peacefully in the sand with buckets and shovels.

"It's alright, mate. he's just being a lad. It's just sand, ya know." he said. Oh, he's from England, I thought. Whew, I though I had to whisk my family away and call the Mouse Police.
"Yeah, thanks," I said "I still don't want him to get sand all over." I offered. Really, It was none of his business what I said to my son, but it was obvious that this guy wanted to talk. So, we did.

His wife sidled over to him and smiled as he introduced "Aubremary", or whatever the hell he said her name is, to me. I searched the pool frantically for my wife and daughter so I would have an excuse to grab my kid by the waistband of his shorts and say "Gotta go, wifey's calling..." and hurry off into the artificial surf with my boy flailing helplessy in my grip. But no, my wife only comes around when I'm relaxing and she has something for me to do.

They talked and gushed about how friendly and lovely Americans are, and that everywhere they went, people are just so friendly and want to talk and talk and talk. Ouch. I continued to grin like an idiot as I realized that they didn't visit New York, or more specifically, Long Island, where I was born, raised, and continue to be miserable.

Friendly people? There's a deli I go to every morning for coffee and a newspaper before I go to work. I've been a regular customer there for about fifteen years and I don't think I've exchanged more then three words with anyone behind the counter, and I'm okay with that. I show you what I want, you get it for me, take my money, and then I leave. End of transaction. I've noticed that outside of the New York, New Jersey, Connecticut region, people change. There's something pathological about all of these nice folks who want to know how you're doing, and tell you to have a nice day. In a way, I was glad that this happy English family landed in "nice country." If they came to Long Island, I'd be appalled.

Anyway, I did my best to look interested and tried hard to decipher their language. They had accents, heavy ones. These were hard working commoners from Manchester who saved up all of their pounds and pence to visit Disney World where families toss around fifty dollar bills with reckless abandon and wind up with nothing to show for it. That morning, they found themsleves in Typhoon Lagoon, talking to me.

At one point, after they told me everything about themsleves, their family, the dream vacation they were on, and how happy they were to be in the United States, they asked about me. They wanted to know if this was our first trip to Disney.
"Well, no. My wife and I came here a long time ago after we were first married. We didn't have kids then."
"Did you fly down, mate?"

"Uh, no. We drove. I have a thing against flying." I don't really, we just thought we'd save money. We're never doing that again.

"How long did it take you to drive down?" Did he say "drive down"? I thought, how would he know where I came from?

"Well, I live on Long Island..." I started to say.

"Long Island?" The wife said. She smiled and looked over at her husband as if she'd won a bet. He had a knowing grin on his face too. "Oh yes, Long Island." he said. "We can tell."
It didn't matter what he told me after that. I felt duped, like they were leading me on in an effort to fulfill their own curiosity.

"That bloke is from New York, don't you think Aubremary?"
"Oh no, Simon, he sounds like he must be from Long Island. Let's talk to him and find out."


There you have it. Even folks who hail from jolly old England have us Long Islanders pegged. Oh, and another thing. We don't say Lawn-Guy-Land. Only people who are trying to make fun of Long Islanders say Lawn-Guy-Land. Thanks for reading. I have to go now and drive my caw to the mawl and get some cawfee. Afta dat, I have ta take da famlee to that restront faw dinnuh.

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