A Study in Contrast

     About a year and a half ago, I was driving back from TF Green Airport in Warwick-Providence, Rhode Island. I was about three-four miles from the airport when I heard a horrible sound. Something was dragging behind me and I eventually realized when I heard the rumble that my muffler had fallen off and was dragging on the asphalt. As I was doing 65-70 on I-95, I couldn't very well stop and I hoped to make it back to my town so I could safely rectify the problem.
     But when I was about three exits from my turnoff, I got pulled over by the Massachusetts State Police. The cop was a diminutive African American fellow who looked startlingly like one of my readers who used to be a MA statie. He'd advised me that several people had called in complaints about me and my muffler. When I told him why I couldn't stop, he insisted, rightly, that I had to get the muffler off any way I could.
     He was nice enough about it and watched and stood guard over me as I got on my back in the breakdown lane and tried pulling off the muffler. I couldn't do it. It was stuck on the rubber bushing and I couldn't pull it off by hand. When I told the statie this, he then reached into his pants pocket and pulled out and opened the sharpest knife I'd ever felt outside of a Ka-Bar. He then handed it to me handle first and told me to try that.
     I was able to cut the bushing within seconds and I then took the rebellious muffler and threw it in my back seat. That black policeman had no idea what I was going to do with that razor-sharp knife but he trusted me with it, anyway. And, naturally, I used it for its intended purpose and gave it back to him. Then we shook hands and parted ways.
     Contrast this with what happened to Terence Crutcher in Tulsa last Friday. Discuss.

     The lead picture is of my two sons (the ones at either end of their late mother.). I have two handsome, intelligent, biracial boys and it breaks my heart I have to teach them how to deal with white cops because, while they're half white, they both look totally African American. Every day of my life, I'm put in the horrifying position of worrying over which one of them will wind up as a hashtag on Twitter that'll drop into oblivion in a few hours.