Cops and Criminals

Last week as I dragged my stroller up the 30 odd stairs at Sydenham station with a four year old hanging on to my elbow, I had that feeling you get when there is someone directly behind you and you are getting in their way. I take my kids on peak hour public transport a few times a week so it is not a feeling I am unfamiliar with, but I had hung back and waited for the stairs to clear so I was a touch irritated. I’d basically made certain whoever it was could get around me if they had to so either they weren’t paying any attention or I was dealing with that particular pain in the arse that has to let you know how much harder you make their life by existing in a public space with children. Some people have a thing with wanting everyone else on public transport to be invisible, so they can make the journey too and from work without actually being aware of it. The sound of a child’s voice saying absolutely anything under those circumstances seems to be regarded as a trespass. Anyway, without even having started, I digress.

I got to the top of the stairs and turned around to make an apology that only I knew was deeply sarcastic and discovered two young fit police officers climbing the stairs behind me. Apparently it had not occurred to either one of them to offer to help.

Allow me to air some of my many prejudices on this subject.

I am constantly amazed by the number of people who have leapt up to help me get on and off trains and railway stations and buses and ferries over the past 4 years, while I have gone through the various shape shifting that goes with pregnancy/toddlers/babies/children. Teenage boys! People who looked, seriously, like they were about to mug you! Gangs! Actual gangs, with patches on. Mad people on the train who everyone cringes away from will suddenly hop off and take the front of your pram as you get off, and then have one of those completely normal 30 second conversations with you of the how-old-oh-sweet-all-different-once-they-start-crawling! variety, and then hop back on and go back to ranting about fucking fuckers being fucking everywhere.

Let’s just say it. Criminals. Criminals help you. Cops don’t. God KNOWS I would never generalize. And I’m desperate to try and teach my children that the police force, or whatever we are calling it now, is a helpful service, there to assist the community. Once, several years ago, a handsome young policeman chased my sons escaping helium balloon onto Oxford St and saved the day, much to the delight of everyone present. I am not sure how much longer I can go on making reference to this single incident when I explain the role of the thin blue line to my kids, especially as a row of police officers stand at the station on a weekly basis, watching the sniffer dogs at work, observing me with benign indifference as I hold the station gate open with one foot while I push a kid and then a pram through it.

I’m not that into the whole real world as it really is theory of child raising. I’ve had to explain a few things to my kids that don’t make a lot of sense to anyone and I try, when doing so, to emphasis the goodness of the world and the responsibility of the strong to help the weak. So when we walk past the beggars in Broadway tunnel with signs written on bits of cardboard and my son asks about them, I say something a teeny bit sickening, like “The man needs some help, so he has written a sign that explains what he needs help with so that the people who can help him know what he needs”. I nauseate myself, but I am trying to answer questions like “Where are the mans shoes? Why does he have blood all over his face? Why is the lady crying?“ in a way that doesn’t give anyone sleepless nights and still means I get to work on time. It means I have presented to my children a picture of the world where people advertise their helplessness only in order to get help, which I tend to refer to as being on the way, if out of sight. I shamelessly emphasise the positive. Hence they think that the man with the prosthetic leg is actually part robot (admittedly, he came up with that one, not me, and it is a very impressive black and silver prosthetic) and that the woman who is three foot tall is also magic. Why talk about accidents and illness and misfortune when instead you can concentrate on how incredibly clever a guide dog can be? They live in the world, the misery will come. I’m just holding it back as long as I can. With help of the general public, or at least the dodgy ones, who aren’t afraid to help.