A young man who used to work with me on a show I was on took me to dinner last night to get advice about “the talk”. His son is 12 now and he has no idea what to say to this kid. Sitting in the booth right behind us were two guys who turned out to be police officers and they were arguing about New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and whether or not he was anti-police and it caught our attention so we started listening.
One officer said he thought de Blasio was anti-police because he hasn’t come out genuinely in support of police in the recent shootings of blacks and that’s because he’s married to a black woman and has two black kids, including a teenage boy and that showed him that de Blasio was sympathetic to the blacks, saying he had to be because he was the head of a black family.
Well, that’s when it got heated.
The other cop said “You are making my point idiot. He does have a black teenage son and I’m sure when they had “the talk”, it went something like this.”
“There are three things I want you to remember son. First, always put God number one and be true to His word. Second, always use protection and third, always respect and cooperate with police.” We got up and left. I said goodbye to Justin but instead of going to my car, I went back inside, gave fist-bumps to both cops, paid their tab and thanked them for the wonderful job they were doing.
Sam Putney