I should have killed you before you were born!” my complainant yelled at her 16-year-old daughter, following up with “You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me!” “I hate you, you ugly old bitch, and I hope you die … weird-ass bitch!” her daughter replied. I could hear this “conversation” from the road. Ultimately, it was all verbal, and the daughter left with a friend … and they all lived happily ever after, or something.

Despite all the absolutely awful parent–kid relationships I’ve seen as a cop and my wife’s witnessed as a teacher, we both wanted a kid. But like many couples, it took a while. Had we not wanted a kid or not had the financial means, emotional maturity or family stability to support one, I’m certain we could have pumped out at least half a dozen in short order. Of course, by “we,” I mean Dana.

But both Dana and I had at least “sat” kids before. As useful a perspective as parenting may provide, when it comes to policing, having babysat is perhaps just as beneficial. Babysitting may as well be a synonym for policing. It’s like 90% of what we do. And there’s no age limit for these babies. We deal with baby-aged babies all the way up to old-ass babies. But the worst babies are the teens. As a group, they’re the most societally disruptive out there, speaking from personal experience. Caught between being a “tough shit” adult and a wholly ignorant child, they’ll cuss and fight one minute, then sob and pout the next.

I’ll admit, I really had no idea the dedication parenting a newborn took until I did it.

On one “groups of teens fighting” run, which was commendable for the absence of firearms but perhaps less so for the absence of reason, I was trying to calm the aggressors in the two groups. They were “beefing” about a girl from one group having said a girl in the other group, ahem, received oral sex “by her boyfriend while she’s on her period … and she said it on Live! … with 16 people watching!” I took a breath and said, to no one listening, “You do realize at least 16 people have driven by and heard the same thing directly from you by this point.” “Now we fi’na beat the fuck outta this lyin’-ass immature bitch!” “You’re on camera making threats, by the way,” I replied, again to basically no one. Then I tried to insert some reason into an emotional situation, an almost guaranteed failure. “So let me make sure I’m following. What you’re saying is you’re going to come back and physically harm this other girl because she lied about what you do?” “Yeah. We fi’na beat. Her. Aaaass.” At least I was heard. “Why? If they’re acting childish, why reduce yourself to that level? Why get cuffed up for something you could just choose not to be affected by?” “Fuck that bitch.” “Are you gonna help stop violence in this city or add to it?” I asked. “Add to it!” the group instantly replied in almost choreographed unison. Tell me that’s not a mental health problem. “Awesome. See you sooner rather than later … and probably later, too.”

On another teen-trouble run, where the complainant said the kid was smoking weed inside his restaurant, I was trespassing a teenage boy from a place called Shrimp Shack, “Where the fish is always fresh!” I’ve never caught a thing on that menu and couldn’t tell you the nearest naturally occurring shrimp population, but I guess that’s beside the point. Anyway, this young man was acting strange, had bloodshot eyes and slurred speech, and moved five steps an hour. In other words, he was, to quote the father of the girlfriend in Pineapple Express, “high as a fucking kite.” He told me he wasn’t — said he was like this because he just donated plasma. Now, I know from four years’ college experience turning blood plasma into Busch Light that, one, donating plasma isn’t really donating since you’re paid, and two, it may make you tired, but it doesn’t make you like this. Still, he was adamant about his story. Not high, just plasma loss. We were speaking with him, speaking with the Shrimp Shack manager, speaking with him again. Eventually the manager told him to leave, so he headed outside and disappeared. My partner asked a couple of bystanders where he went, and this older woman gestured toward an older-model white Ford Taurus, saying, “He’s in that Ford.” So we walked over to the car with the manager, trying to formally trespass him and make sure he wasn’t about to drive.

As we approached the trunk of the car, the guy opened his door and began to get out of the driver’s seat. No big deal. But here’s where the deal almost became big, like national headline big. As he was slowly getting out of the car, or so we thought, he saw us, then rapidly ducked inside and began reaching down and around in the car. We asked him to please show his hands as he exited. Up to that point, he’d shown no warning signs aside from being super-duper blazed, so the reaching made me think he was just unbuckling or at worst stashing his stash. “Hey, man, show us your hands as you get out.” No acknowledgment, still rummaging around by the center console. This was somewhat concerning, given that handguns are often shoved there, so I asked the Shrimp Shack manager to head back inside. “Show us your hands.” Still nothing but reaching, more hastily at this point. “Let me see your hands!” I yelled, loudly and clearly enough a deaf man would understand. This time he glanced back at us and paused momentarily. My heart rate was up, palms were sweaty. Mom’s spaghetti. A moment later, he very swiftly reached down before lunging out of the car with a black object in his right hand. “Handsinthefuckingair!” I blurted out as he urban-pirouetted to face us, guns facing back at him … holding a cellphone. He had a cellphone in his hand. My beat partner and I lowered our weapons and let out a collective sigh of relief. This genius prioritized grabbing a fallen cellphone over listening to the clear and repeated commands of gun-wielding police officers 12 feet away.

I explained to our teenage friend why we’d pointed guns at him. In response, he whined, cussed us out and began recording us. Despite my Black beat partner, we were both “racists targeting Black people for petty shit.” The same sort of response I got for “targeting” teens by cuffing them up for pointing guns at people, only to hear passersby yell at me for “puttin’ handcuffs on innocent little kids.” Or when I “targeted” a teen girl by arresting her “just for dancing.” She’d stabbed her cousin and decided to twerk for passersby while we waited on her wagon. “Don’t take criticism from people you would never go to for advice,” Morgan Freeman says in my head in instances like these. Thanks for the perspective, Mr. Freeman.

Eventually, after a couple years of meds, doctor’s visits and routine “trying,” the polite way of telling in-laws you’re having frequent sex, we were fortunate enough to have a kid of our own. What are the odds we’d end up with the cutest, funniest, sweetest little girl in the whole wide world? (She’s still young.) I’ll admit, I really had no idea the dedication parenting a newborn took until I did it. People talk about how tired they are the first few weeks after the baby’s born, but I never believed they slept as little as they said … until I did. I found out they were actually downplaying it, probably just too tired to know any better. I’m convinced there are more parents than kids afraid of the dark, not because of some unknown boogeyman, but because it’s unknown whether they’ll get to sleep that night. “When will this end?!” I’d think to myself as I waited out the nighttime storm before the calm. Having the food source, Dana had it much worse. But even the most sleep-deprived nights were washed away by a single morning smile or one of those little coos or high-pitched giggles. And the laughs — forget it. Best medicine there is.

Since Dana wanted to exclusively breastfeed and my chest wouldn’t produce food, after a couple months my nighttime role was vastly diminished. I was basically just in charge of letting the dog out to poop, plus the occasional baby diaper change. I never imagined the amount of midnight poop discussions Dana and I would have. “His was a little diarrhea-ier than usual.” “She had a really good poop. A bunch!” “He pooped twice last night, both pretty solid.” It seems parenting isn’t as much defined by maturity level as by how often partners discuss their creatures’ poops. My 6-year-old self would be so proud. Similarly, it seems policing as a father is as much defined by cleaning up the shit at home as the shit on the streets.