What can a mother expect from her son?

As a mother, I often wonder if I might have been too harsh with my children. I meant only to teach them about responsibility. But I suppose I could have been a little extreme. Perhaps this explains why my son Ron became a policeman.

Often I good-naturedly tease Ron about his job. Genetics aside, he and I are each other’s emotional (and career) opposite. If he didn’t look so much like me, I’d suspect he’d been switched at birth.

Sometimes, when I’m out driving around, I’ll call him up and say something like, “Hey, why are you guys giving out tickets on Highway 544 – in a construction zone where no one has ever even seen a worker?”

And he’ll give me the rote response he’s probably tested on countless motorists. “We don’t give out tickets, Ma’am. People earn them.”

I joke about how many Krispy Kreme donuts he’s consumed and seek data concerning the number of grandmothers he’s stopped this week. But what I really want to know is whether he’s encountered any danger or placed himself in harm’s way. And because I already know both answers, I don’t ask.

Ron chooses carefully the police stories he offers me. And most of the time, I keep them to myself. They’re our private communications, often the closest we ever get to what I’d consider intimate discourse. However, the tale he told me this morning is one I feel compelled to share.

It was Ron’s second consecutive night of having to work his late shift and then appear in court, in McKinney, by 8:00 A.M. (This is one of the many lesser-known hazards that accompany his profession.) His sergeant had agreed to let him go home an hour early, which meant he’d officially be off duty a little past midnight. But about five minutes before his shift should have ended, an elder woman, one he says was driving 10 mph, passed his squad car – for the second time. She puttered by him in her 1980s Oldsmobile, with her car lights on bright and her hands on the steering wheel in what Ron described as a “death-grip.”

He had to make a choice. If he stopped her, this would mean overtime and another night of inadequate sleep.

When he switched on his squad car lights, the lady’s automobile rolled to a gentle stop. And before Ron could ask questions, the senior driver said, “Oh-h-h, I’m so-o-o glad to see YOU! I’ve been lost for-ever.”

Now, mind you, it was after midnight. The lady said she was trying to find her way back to her home – in Garland. She was then in North Plano. And when asked where she was coming from, she replied, “The tax office.”

Before their conversation ended, Ron learned that this disoriented, hungry, tired and frightened woman had been lost and driving around in triple-digit temperatures for seven hours. On her car seat my son noticed a Google map someone must have printed for her. The map provided driving directions to her home, but she’d been unable to decipher them.

“Do you have a family member or a neighbor that I could call to help you?” Ron asked. The driver said she didn’t. Her husband had died a few years ago of cancer and her only child lived in California.

Exhausted, Ron radioed for a backup officer to meet him and instructed the woman to get inside his vehicle. The two patrolmen then drove both the eighty-one-year-old and her Cutlass Supreme to their Garland home. And while he was there, Ron made sure to obtain the woman’s son’s phone number.

At 2:15 A. M. Ron finally arrived at my house to catch a few hours sleep. And at seven o’clock that same morning, as he was heading out the door for court, he relayed this story to me.

Now I’m thinking maybe I didn’t do so badly, after all.  

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Last Updated: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 09:01 PM