as small as a world and as large as alone, clatterbane: The story of how my mom’s aunt...

9:42pm July 17, 2014

The story of how my mom’s aunt Polly got fired for police brutality is actually kind of funny, other than the part where she did administer a severe beatdown to some guy.

That was in the ’50s, when they were only letting women do parking enforcement or be crossing guards. So, she got on as an elementary school crossing guard because they had just moved and really needed the money.

That went OK until one day some man was paying absolutely no attention to what he was doing, and didn’t even slow down before driving straight through the crosswalk full of kids. Thankfully they all managed to dive out of the way, and nobody got hurt.

He didn’t even slow down after almost running over half a dozen kids, and just drove on like nothing had happened. So, Polly made sure the kids were safe, then took off down the street after him like the T-1000 or something.

She caught up to him at the next traffic light, where he did actually stop. So she demanded to know what the hell he thought he was doing almost running over those kids, he started mouthing off and insulting her and trying to drive away again…and things went downhill from there.

She ended up yanking him out of the car through the open driver’s side window, and beating the hell out of him. He ended up in the hospital. The police department did not take kindly to that. That fellow apparently didn’t even get a ticket for almost running over children and driving away, much less resisting arrest—but she got fired over the incident.

Besides helping illustrate why half the family still refers to totally losing it like that and having a serious rage episode as “doing a Polly” (and my mom did a LOT of Pollys), this is also a good example of how you can sometimes be in the right—but still be very, very wrong with your responses and how you’re dealing with other people under the influence of rage.

Maybe *especially* what feels like righteous anger. And before you know it, you’re hurting other people in ways that you wouldn’t normally consider acceptable at all. That may not take the form of literally stomping somebody into the pavement, but it doesn’t have to in order to do real harm.