Bad parent! Bad, bad parent!

It started -- as the really obnoxious events do -- innocently enough: I had just gone off-duty and have decided that I simply must have something from the grocery store on the route home. Still in uniform, I grab the item(s) required and am patiently standing in queue at the register.

In the next line over, Young Miss is crying her eyes out for God-only-knows what reason. Mother (I assume) of Little Miss sees me standing next door, so to speak, gives Little Miss's arm a good shake, points at me and hisses, "If you don't stop crying this instant that officer is going to arrest you and throw you in jail!"

*twitch, twitch*

You don't want to know how much I really hate that kind of bushwa.

It's not my job to terrify your children -- either for real or by proxy.

I've got no problem with being the boogeyman for a twenty-five-year-old gangsta, but I've got a real problem with being the cause of a six-year-old's nightmares.

It is not inconceivable to think that child may need the services of a Peace Officer sometime in the next couple of decades -- equating him with the Closet Monster is not doing anyone any favours.

Sooner or later the sprogs are going to figure out that you are lying when you say the cops are going to arrest the them for crying, or not eating their green beans, or making themselves throw up, or not coming in when you call, or whatever -- and then where will you be?

LawDog