On many days we cross paths with close to 1,000 people if you count our comings and goings at Costco, Walmart, Vons, Albertsons, Home Depot and other places. Most of the people we see barely register in our memories.
Some people do stick out though. You know, the “crazies;” the ones who swat at imaginary flies; those who laugh and have animated conversations when standing by themselves, and the occasional person who is seen cursing into an empty shopping bag.
Even though seeing them breaks our hearts and fills us with sadness, we avoid these people because we know something is wrong. Most of them are harmless, but we don’t want to find out the hard way if they aren’t.
What about the people who look, and for the most part act, normal but really aren’t? They are the dangerous ones; the ones we would avoid, if only we knew.
A while back I wrote a column about the Chula Vista police department’s Lenco Bearcat SWAT Rescue Vehicle.
Rarely do my columns generate reader feedback. Yet, the editor sent me a letter he had received relative to that column. The writer accused me of writing “misinformation,” yet never pointed out any errors. Then he accused the Chula Vista Police Department, and police officers everywhere, of being “afraid.”
The writer said all police are afraid of the citizens they are supposed to protect. He said the job scares them like little boys and they should quit.
I contacted the writer and chided him for calling all police everywhere “afraid.” I asked him if maybe wasn’t he the cowardly one who spread his message of police cowardice, but then wouldn’t allow his views to go beyond me? I also asked for one or more examples of my misinformation.
He wrote back stating he wanted the editor see what a horrible writer I am but still didn’t pass along examples of any misinformation I passed along.
He also wrote police were the tools of the government and the police needed all the heavy artillery for when they took over the country after the economic collapse. He said the police were nothing more than a “gun toting cult.” Whoa!
He said the United States was a totalitarian country and doom was imminent. I wondered what he’d think about a trip to Afghanistan or another Middle Eastern county to see totalitarianism at its best.
This is the kind of guy we should fear: a person who sounds and acts normal most of the time, but has a head full of paranoid poison.
As disconcerting as this exchange was, I don’t sleep with one eye open. I fear neither him, nor the police. If I am in fear of something I will call the police.
