My cousin, the cop

[dendraphile]

My mother's cousin is the person I frequently compare other people's MILs to. She's very well intentioned, if a little overbearing

Comments

[therachel]

I'd say just arrange to meet him for dinner somewhere, just the two of you, take him out for ... i don't know, what do would-be-cops like, doughnuts?
Krispy Creme doughnut burgers?
Whatever, and go from there.
Just get real ballsy one day and do it.

Why didn't she tell him herself I wonder?

[dendraphile]

I know why she didn't tell him. How do you tell your son that you were brutally raped almost every day of your life until you ran away from home as a teenager?

I would just take him out, but he's in school in Carbondale. I sent him a brief email, telling him I'd like to send him a long one and alluding to the subject, and asking for a more private email address if he wanted to read it. He sent me his email address. I've spent most of the day drafting the letter. I'm agonizing over whether to send it.

[therachel]

To me an email always sounds like an awful way to tell anybody anything important. It's a phone call I'd recommend, but that sounds harder. Hrumph. Good luck. I hope he doesn't turn on himself at all, that would be hard information to digest at such a goofy age. That's a goofy age, that early-twenties-bullshit time...

[dendraphile]

I posted a link on facebook- the chain of comments is 30-something long, and mostly my cousin saying that he would love to arrest cancer patients for smoking pot, and that he doesn't care about right or wrong- just about THE LAW. No acknowledgement that Jim Crow was bad, no acknowledgement that Nuremburg laws were bad, just "I'M A COP I WILL ARREST PEOPLE!" Going so far as to say that he believes that anybody who might have used drugs IS using drugs and should be arrested. In short, he just wants to beat people up under the guise of lawfulness, but he doesn't actually care at all about the morality- so long as he's the guy in the badge.