Stupid Stuff



Back in 1972 I got married. It was a good marriage for almost nine years, which has absolutely nothing to do with the piece of my life I'm about to share with you. It was a whirlwind existence back then. I had been sworn in as a police officer on a Friday, got married on Saturday, and worked my first shift as a rookie on Sunday. Now that I reflect on it, I still owe my ex-wife a honeymoon but she'll have to wait a while.

Shortly after I started the police job, I was off to 400 hours of training at the Municipal Police Academy.

I don't know if the thought ever occurred to you, but part of a cop's training is crowd control. It's not as important now as it was then. Remember that in those days, the memories of the radical sixties were still fresh in everyone's minds. There were demonstrations against the war and there were race riots. These days, all we have is exuberant sports fans.

So there we were, out on the firing range, learning about crowd control. The tools of crowd control include such things as riot batons - which is a nice way of saying 'long head buster,' helmets, shields and, my favorite, tear gas grenades.

"Here's how it is" said the instructor. "I'm gonna pop this canister of riot gas and you guys are gonna do the riot squad shuffle with your batons, right through the cloud of gas, just so you know you can do it.." He was such a sweet man.

He pulled the pin and tossed the canister of tear gas into the imaginary crowd approaching us with destruction in their eyes. The canister rolled 50 feet into the crowd as we watched in anticipation as it sat there and did nothing. The instructor related as how sometimes the tear gas canisters are duds as he pulled his revolver and shot a hole through it to render it inert. "Don't do that in a crowd" he offered helpfully.

The second canister was a bit more successful as it spewed a cloud of thick white smoke laden with tearing agents. We took our riot batons and marched dutifully toward the smoke. As the wind shiftedsuddenly, twenty rookie cops scattered on first contact, forgetting the riot squad shuffle and just about everything else except crying, cursing and coughing.

At the end of the day, the canister with the .38 caliber hole caught my eye. It looked like a great memento of the day. I took it, the pin and the fuse pin and stuck them in my briefcase. That night, I reassembled the thing and set on the table in the den where is provided conversation with my friends for several years. Most of my friends were cops. One of us would pull the pin and hand it around the room until the frenzied laughter subsided.

My best friend, however, was my wife and my tear gas grenade did not provide her with any great conversation. It served only to provide her with much agitation and perhaps a little fear. So, several years later, I decided to rid the house of this appalling thing.

I took the canister to the back of the house to put it in the trash. I thought for a moment about this sad event and decided it would be only proper to make sure it was totally safe. I pulled the pin one final time, this time removing the spoon - the lever that years before was supposed to fire the grenade.

The canister began to make a strange noise followed by a low pop. Thick white smoke laden with tearing agents began to belch out into the beautiful summer evening. The breeze carried the smoke through the suburban neighborhood as the windows slammed shut.

The State Police arrived. There wasn't much they could do but they had a good laugh. The wife had one of her told-you-so episodes. I never brought home any more tear gas grenades.