Sheriff Rhonda just got called down by the law. It's about time, I guess. Never even had any kind of ticket in my 55 years. But today all that nearly changed ... it didn't fully change because I was let go with a warning in a kind of anticlimactic way after the blue lights and singular siren burp.
If anyone is on the side of the law, I am. Grew up respecting my police officer father more than I can tell you, and learned from that a trust that most law enforcement has the best of intentions under the literal worst of circumstances. I want to do good and what's right. I have no need to buck the rules.
So today's scrutiny came as quite a surprise as I was taking my friend home after an afternoon together. She happens to be a 10 year old African American girl who lives in public housing. We had just spent the past hour together, as we do every Thursday afternoon after school, at a community center where I give her a piano lesson. She's just mastered the left hand of the last piece in Teaching Little Fingers to play. She was humming it on our way to her home.
Upon entering the development where she lives, I turned on my left turn signal - ever always careful to use them properly you see - and started to begin thinking about making the turn when my friend shouted out the window "Momma! There's my momma!" Momma is in a park to my right - my friend shouts to me "Turn right! Turn right!" I follow suit easily, it's a residential section, not much traffic, slow speed, and make the right turn quickly but only after confirming it was not hazardous in any way ... but my left turn signal is still "a-blinking." I am aware of my mistake, but see no harm in it until ...
The officers approach my car, one on either side of me, confess that they "were not following me," point out my mistake, ask to see my license, again say they "were not following me," give me a warning this time and send me on my way.
I have felt conspicuous entering the public housing development where two of my friends live and who I pick up each week for music lessons. Children have begun gathering around my shiny red Volvo, hoping to get in on whatever it is that I am offering. I've seen neighbors watching the old white woman coming in to take the children away (I have parental consent) and I have wondered if I am suspect.
Because they "were not following me" (two officers who were white, just like me), I can't help but wonder if I have been reported, someone different who enters in and interacts with the children. I can't help but wonder if the neighborhood wonders if I am "dealin'" something.
The more I think about it, I realize I am dealin' something with the children. I am dealin' opportunity in the form of relationship and music education. I am dealin' juice boxes and apples. I go where the children are and get them and take them to a place where they get committed relationship to stick with them through school suspensions or bus suspensions, or expulsions, and to get their attention on practice and progress and hope and music for the sake of music. I love seeing them looking at nothing but the music and their fingers on the violin strings or piano keyboard. No one is threatening them. No one is judging them. They relax and focus on something worthy. And they gain from it.
I've heard it asked of gang leaders how they get such support and participation by vulnerable kids. The answer that stands out is "We're there." The gathering around my car, the desire for kids I've never even met begging to "go to violin, too" is proof that these children often go where the "get in the car" is.
I am going to keep being there. Because goodness for the sake of the children has to be there, too.
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