Thanksgiving

My visit to the police department was less than fruitful. I spent hours standing in line as countless post-accident odd couples struggled to get their story straight. These budding Oscar and Felixes would jabber loudly at the police officer until eventually the cop would throw his arms up in disgust and dispatch the arguing couple to negotiate amongst themselves. One of the things that makes police work so hard, is that an incredibly high percentage of the people that they interact with on any given day will be lying to them. Up is down, red is green, and so on. This is the very same thing that makes it painful to interact with the police (I absolutely hate being pulled over, although I'm basically a law abiding person) because dealing with a human lie detector, much like the mechanical variety, simply makes you feel guilty. I had the same reaction years ago when an employer sent me to a dismal, rundown clinic for a pre-employment drug screen. I had absolutely no cause for concern, and yet just taking the drug test made me feel both guilty and slightly degraded. 

When, after a long wait, it came time for me to approach the counter, the sergeant and I struggled to understand each other, finally agreeing that I should bring the car into the police lot for inspection. When I returned from moving the car he was busy writing up an accident report for another pair of misfits, and so I sat down and waited for him to finish. About half an hour later their paperwork was completed and the sergeant promptly stood up and left for his break. I tried to get one of the other officers to help me, but they insisted that I should wait for the sergeant, who, when he did finally return some forty minutes later, seemed to have no recollection of our earlier interaction:

"Two car accident?" "No just one car." Where?" "It was parked in Jumeirah Three, is that what you mean?" "No. Where car now?" "It's in the visitor lot." "OK, bring car here now."

Now, this guy is probably from Yemen, and he probably speaks four or more languages, so I really don't mean to criticize his english, which would have my non-existent Arabic pinned and howling in pain almost immediately if we could somehow pit our language skills against each other in an ultimate fighting cage match. But, explaining the fact that I had no clear idea how the scratch came to be, and that furthermore, I had nothing to gain by lying as the rental is fully insured, proved nearly impossible. He kept asking where we scratched the car, and, probably because he's in the business of listening to lies all day, he was offended by my perceived obstinacy, throwing his hands up in the air in the international hand signal for "you're full of shit, and I give up," and walking away. I think he had some idea that there was a communication problem, because he sent out a more fluent Emarati officer, who wore a festive police tunic, in what must be a nod to traditional dress. This new officer informed me that I should come back in the morning as they were "only dealing with emergency reports" for the remainder of the evening.

So, in order to reclaim Thanksgiving from the law enforcement blues, I drove to the store and grabbed whatever Thanksgiving staples I could find, which wound up being a giant halal turkey breast, a box of cran-raspberry juice, and some pear slices that came soaked in cranberry juice. Which, combined with mashed yams and asparagus, made a nice finish to a crazy day. After dinner we played scrabble, our ice skating plans long abandoned due to my lengthy stay at police HQ.