Let me break it down

Welcome to another Monday! Highlights from my weekend consisted of selling my patio furniture for $5 more than what I asked for. {note to self: always ask for $75 because ATM’s only dispense 20’s}. I didn’t do it on purpose but it definitely worked in my favor. The other was I made it within 10 seconds of the ice cream place closing. Her hand was on the light switch when I charged in asking the obvious but necessary question, “ARE YOU CLOSING!?”

Thank goodness the girl had a heart and gave me my 2 scoops I was desperate for before locking up. She must have seen the desperation in my eyes. –oh, coffee and peanut butter ice creams, and it was perfection.

I would have made it in time if I hadn’t gone out to the farthest field known to man to catch a sunset. Had I known that all the gorgeous fields I’d been eyeing for the past 3 weeks had been plowed (the day before), I would have gotten my ice cream hours earlier, but as I drove past one sad plowed field, then another, then another, until I was practically in the other town, I finally pulled over and made due with what I had.

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In keeping with Jenni’s question for the day, ‘what do I do’, its one of those that I sit and think how to tell. All my adult life, I’ve been so reluctant to tell what I did. It would provoke nonstop curious questions, gaping mouth stares, scrutiny, and it was never something I liked dealing with. So I would find ways to get around the answer, divert their questions, and turn the tables on them with a battery of questions, because let’s be honest; people like to talk about themselves more than listen. And it usually worked.

Even now, working in a normal office for the past year, only a handful of people know what I did. They have the appropriate shocked expression, declaring how I don’t ‘fit the type’ and they never could imagine, but I still keep it rather guarded. Never sharing stories or even let on when old co workers come in who don’t recognize me.

It’s a trust thing with me.

I also have my own business. I sell lia sophia jewelry and have for the past 2 1/2 years, and I love it. Its fun. I meet all sorts of people and I get to play with beautiful jewelry every single day. My old job gets linked into it as well. And there are times I’m very careful with what I say, but once they know what I was, its hard to hide, as was the case Friday night, as I had dinner with a “retired” gang banger and another who declared herself too tough to join a gang back then.

did you know there’s no ‘getting out’ of a gang? you retire (which is hard to do) or die.

I’m sitting there across the table from them, and it was a conflict. One knew what I used to do and told the other by referring to me as a ‘clown’. It took a while for the girl to realize she was serious. As we talked, they told stories of what it was like on the other side of the bars, the strip searches, the life of an inmate, where I’ve only known what it was like to be the one with the badge. And it was weird. Listening to it all without being in that life anymore…granted, I wouldn’t have been there if I were still in that life.

Its been 2 1/2 years since I’ve retired from Corrections, but it seems like it never happened. Like that part of my life was a complete dream..(or nightmare), but yet after all this time, it still gets linked into who I am today and “what I do” because it still takes up a huge part of myself, in how I look at people, talk with people, interact and I don’t think that will ever go away.

Even though I’ve moved on to a more carefree daily life, I will always be a Sergeant… because my retired badge says so, and frankly, I’m proud of that.

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