Cops

Today I saw two undercover cops hanging out on the street in broad daylight. How did I know they were undercover? 'Cuz they were Hispanic, with shaved heads, wearing hoodies and sitting in the two front seats of a beat-up grey Ford Taurus. How did I know they were cops? 'Cuz they were parked next to McDonalds, they were eating McDonalds and they wore bulletproof jackets that said POLICE on the front. And on the dashboard of their beater was one of those clip on disco lights that cops use in a car chase. How obvious. It made me really sad to think that in between chasing bullets and solving homicides our cops have to catch a late lunch off the dollar menu. The guys on Law & Order are always getting classy New York street food, like polish dogs with relish or deli food wrapped up in wax paper. Poor DC cops get MickyD's washed down with a big gulp. It's way more manly, but also totally humiliating. (You know what? I've never ever seen a cop eat a packed lunch. White bread, plastic baggy, drink box, apple? Nunca!) If I was a cop, I'd have my morning snack at Dunkin' doughnuts, papusas for lunch, and my afternoon snack off the dollar menu. I would also probably keep beef jerky and altoids and a box of Little Debbies in my glove compartment and come nighttime I'd be hitting one 7/11 after the next for frozen burritos and slurpees. I'd love an excuse to eat that stuff (I gotta night shift *shrug* start stuffing face). ¶ A while back, City Paper did this article on how all the cops are soooo fat and soooo lazy and how they can't chase robbers like they used to, but come on, that was a little one-sided, non? Maybe those rayon cop pants only come in 42 inch waists but that doesn't mean we've got crappy cops, because really, do you have to be able to run a 5 minute mile to be a good cop? Heck no. You've just gotta be able to stay up all night and be able to know the difference between the suspicious looking creep who's actually a model citizen and that normal looking guy who's about to shoot someone. And for me that would take more junk food than two aisles at CVS. ¶Men's Health gives out these awards to people who lose a ton of weight and still look good, and a while back they gave one to a cop who lost something like 112 pounds. His 'after' picture was hot--he was wearing biker shorts and a tank top and running uphill in the mountains. But anyway, this totally ripped cop explained how all those late and blood-filled nights got him eating all this trash and before he knew it, wham, he was like 350 pounds. I gotcha. I could so do the same. Some days I feel like that's exactly what I'm doing. It's like I'm racing backwards from the after picture to the before. Except I'm not a cop. I mean, I do eat stuff off the dollar menu, but I don't shave my head and wear a hoodie or drive a ford.