Saturday, October 25, 2003

Our Friend, The Policeman

A relatively short dinner-and-drinks night on the town with old college friend Hayley, her husband Peter, and their three year old Linnea last night to kick off a busy weekend: Jack (my grandfather’s brother) and his wife May impending any minute now, a drive down to New Jersey this afternoon to visit my brother and attend a cousin’s wedding the next day. Gonna be a busy week, with no blogging expected from now until the Monday Mosh meme kicks in again at the week’s beginning.

Though we don’t see them often enough, Hayley and Peter are about the closest thing we have to peers-in-common out there. Young parents, community-grounded; preferences for coziness, wood furnishings, and local organics; one child each, both girls. Hayley and I went to college together, but she also attended the prep school where I teach, and she and Darcie grew up less than ten miles from each other, while both Peter and I grew up in Bostonian suburbia. But the way we sustain our commonality puts us at opposite end of a spectrum of sorts – while I have long hair and teach, Peter, once a bakery owner, now close-crops his head and polices Battleboro for a living. Not as distant as one might think, though: we spent a good deal of time comparing notes on pay and benefits (his are much better, and not just because of the excellent overtime opportunities in an understaffed department) and comparing anecdotes, and it turns out resident teaching shares an awful lot in common with small-town police work.

Peter does overnight shifts almost entirely in order to have the most time for his family, so part of the end-early reasoning was his own 9:30 start time. But moreso, the kiddies got cranky quickly, and weren’t happy trying to share. It’s okay – a nice night with no pressure to stay up late was afterall a good thing, timely and needed, to prepare for the stress of family and the days ahead. See y’all Monday, folks.

posted by boyhowdy | 3:10 PM |

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