What it’s Like to Get Questioned by the FBI

Jan 182008
 

Part of my “What it’s like to…” series.

I was talking about governmental policies and being in military families with a friend the other day. The conversation reminded me of something from my childhood. In the early to mid 80s, I was questioned by the FBI. There were sex abuse charges brought up at my daycare and they were questing all the kids who were there at the time.

Until I was old enough to baby-sit my brother, he and I were regular attendees of the daycare. However, the oh so brilliant Mr. FBI refused to believe that my brother was there. The piece of paper he had said that my brother wasn’t there, so of course a piece of paper could never be wrong. My dad tried to explain to him that his daughter would never be there without his son, but Mr. FBI said the piece of paper wasn’t wrong. My dad must simply be mistaken. Right… Such incompetence I can only shake my head at now. Sure, my brother probably didn’t have anything to add, but kids notice things they don’t even realize that they do.

As to my own questioning, what I remember was that it took place at home. I sat with my mom on my couch. I don’t remember if my dad was in the room or watching my brother. FBI men stood in front of me. They seemed tall. It was no men in black scenario. I seem to remember a lot of brown clothing. They asked a lot of questions. Ones I remember thinking were retarded to ask me. “Has anyone every touched you inappropriately?” I’d turn to my mom. “Huh?” She’d have to explain what he meant. Big words for a small child. Sheesh. I felt smaller than I was. And until I understood why they were asking these questions, I just wanted to go outside…find my brother…and go ride bikes or
something.

Years later I can tell that my answers probably helped pinpoint a few things down. The two adults involved were women I had liked. I thought of them as my grown up friends. They let me help out with the babies. When I was small, I really liked babies. They intrigued me. I spent a lot of time playing with them. However, and here’s the big however, I was not allowed to be in the room when they fed or changed the babies. They’d push me out of the room and close the door. I learned later there was a horrible reason for this. My mom explained it to me after the questioning. If ever there was I time I would want to cause someone bodily harm…it would have been to those two women…

In any event, being questioned by the FBI was really no different than be questioned by the police. As you can imagine though, after this happened, the childcare center went through a major overall. That was a good thing. It needed it. Things were not always good there beyond what happened to a few of the babies. I had a friend who was thrown up against a wall by one of the adults. Blood spilled out of her nose turning her most of her yellow turtleneck orange. A horrifying sight I’ve never forgotten. But now I digress and shift away from the original point to the post. :P That happens. Perhaps next time I’ll tell you about the time when I was twelve and OD’d thanks be to some incompetent military doctors. Oh yeah, super fun times…with a capital S indeed. ;)

What it’s Like to Serve on a Jury

Mar 272007
 

Part of my “What it’s like to…” series.

It’s been a while since I wrote something for this series and having just spent the past three days serving jury duty, I figured why not? This is a lengthy one, but I wanted to document how it worked. So here we go….

I’ll admit it, I got that slip of paper in the mail announcing my juror summons and I groaned. Instantly my head rattled with ideas of how I could possibly get out of this, or at least reschedule it. I tried to reschedule it, but my request was denied. Bleh. So, off to court I went.

There I followed the sheep herd as we went through metal detectors and passed our bags through the obligatory X-ray machine thingy. Many people groaned about how we must all be the people who couldn’t come up with better excuses for getting off. Others related the process to being worse than getting a root canal done. Oh yeah, feel the love and excitement going around this group.

We sat in a big room full of seats and hoped our names wouldn’t get called. Many of us tried to read or just talk, but that was hard over the booming previously taped Entertainment Tonight show they were playing on the wall sized TV. The show was reporting more nonsense about celebrity lives, but then a clip came on about a brawl that happened in a court room. We all laughed. I don’t believe the courts meant to play a show that had that on it. Hah!

Then names started to be called. Mine was one of them. I shuffled along with my new sheep herd and moseyed into a court room. There we found the judge, a court aide, the plaintiff and his attorney, plus the defendant’s attorney. I noted that the walls were wood paneling, with the wood being the same color as the judge’s desk and the tables where council sat. Very monochromatic.

We were told that it was a civil case involving a slip and fall accident and that it was estimated to take 3 1/2 days. The jury would consist of eight people since it was a civil case. Names were randomly called for people to move into the jury box for questioning by the judge. As people were excused from the case, others were selected to take their place. I had no idea selecting a jury could be so tedious and time consuming. The judge reads off question after question for each and every person. He started to sound like that clichéd broken record player.

My turn came and I answered where I live, what I do, whether or not I’m married and have kids, etc. etc. I had to conference up at the judge’s desk with council because I said that I had been in an accident with injury. That was nerve-wracking. Standing in between council in front of a judge is a bit daunting, what can I say? I stammered a bit as I explained my dog bite incident, then was accepted as juror #7. I took a seat.

Watching who was getting excused by the judge or council I can guess that I was picked because I am female, white, employed, don’t work in the legal or medical field, nor am I married to someone who does. Plus, I don’t have kids that work in either field either. We did end up with one man on the jury, but he was the last chosen and I believe because of those left, few fit the mold I’ve described anyway.

The judge went over our responsibilities and introduced us to the jury room, then we were dismissed for the day. At this point I was still shaking my head in wonder and shock that I was sitting on a jury—and that’d I’d have to call in to work too.

The next day the jurors filtered into the jury room. We found out that some of us were excited to be there, although others were less than pleased. However, we’d all resided ourselves to make the best of it. What else can you do, eh?

This room, too, was wood paneling. It was small. No windows. There was a bathroom and a microwave and a big table with chairs. We spent a lot, and I do mean a lot, of time in this room. What you never see on TV is all the waiting around that goes on in court. The judge has other things going on so there are times when we’d sit in that room for an hour or more just chatting and basically hanging out. The judge was very nice and respectful of our time though, so he did his best to tell us how long we’d have in between in case we wanted to go make phone calls or get coffee or something.

We saw three witnesses that first day. The plaintiff, the defendant, plus one doctor. The next day we saw another doctor. I found the questioning to be tedious and dull, yet intriguing at the same time. It actually became like a puzzle for me, fitting all the pieces of information together to see what the picture really is. After the last witness, we experienced the most painful part of the trail…the explanation of the law. The judge goes over all the points of the law that pertain to the case, as well as the definitions for all the legalese. I tried very hard to pay attention here. My head hurt and eventually it sounded like how the adults speak in Charlie Brown cartoons. Talk about being overwhelmed….

Next began the jury deliberation.

The gist of the case is this: Around 5-5:30 one night a man was walking. It was snowy and the plows had pushed show over the grass so he went around. He stepped out of the street and onto the dirt and fell. There was ice under the snow. He fractured his wrist and tore cartilage, the latter created permanent damage which means he will always have pain (according to his doctor).

The question came into play, was the owner of the property (the company) negligent for not having cleared the snow? If so, was the negligence probable cause for the accident? The alternate question would be whether the plaintiff was negligent for having stepped there instead of going around. If yes, then we’d have to set of percentages of fault.
When we sat down to deliberate, many of us were siding with the defendant. We were thinking that the area is not a sidewalk, so the owner isn’t responsible for shoveling there.
Then someone noticed the bus stop sign.

We were given pictures of the scene as evidence and finally were able to see them up close to examine them. Turns out the area where the man fell is a bus stop. Even though it’s dirt around the bus stop, NJ law dictates that land that is designated as pedestrian area is consider a “sidewalk,” i.e. since it is a bus stop and labeled as such, it is an area designated for foot traffic. NJ law also dictates that commercial property owners are responsible for keeping “sidewalks” clear on their property, which in this case includes the land with the bus stop on it.

And yes, it sucks for the commercial property owner. I know this. They’ve been in that spot for nine years and never knew they had to shovel the bus stop. I don’t necessarily agree with that, but the law is pretty straight forward here, even if I’ve glossed over what it is a bit. Although I will point out that mention of the bus stop never did get brought up in trial. We asked about the law pertaining to it being a bus stop and the judge told us he couldn’t tell us that. I’m not sure why it wasn’t included in the case since we aren’t privy to how what evidence got there. So we had to rely on what information was given to us and take it from there.

The deliberation process was interesting. We had many questions, where the foreman had to write them down on a notepad, then ring the buzzer twice for the court aide to come. With each question, we’d get shuffled back into the courtroom for the judge to answer the question (or in most cases tell us he couldn’t answer it.) That was tough. We aren’t allowed to take notes and can only rely on our collective memory, so even if something is noted in the court records, we are not privy to that.

Surprising to me, we also had to come up with a the payout figures to the plaintiff on our own as well. Luckily we had someone with some swift thinking for number crunching so we came to a logical conclusion for that, at least to us. Then the foreman clicked the buzzer once, which meant we were ready with the verdict. We were called into court to announce it and the plaintiff thanked us on the way out. Tada. Jury duty was over.

All in all it was interesting and I learned a lot, but I am glad I didn’t get called for a criminal case since those can take a long, long time. I also go some inspiration for writing out of it which I hope to put to good use as soon as I can.

What it’s Like to Have Bent Pinkies

Nov 022006
 

Bent PinkyPart of my “What it’s like to…” series.

So yes, that is my hand pictured there. I scanned it, then as I looked it and noticed all the swirls of my fingerprints…well, that just couldn’t be posted up here like that. So I colored over it in green. Works for me. Take a look at that pinky finger and see how it bends inward at the top? The one on my left hand does that too, only not quite as much. I figured I would write a little on what it was like to grow up with bent pinkies.

It may seem like a strange topic but for me it’s just an odd little fact of life. It’s a genetic thing. My dad has them. His father had them too. I am not sure who else or even why it happens. Strange alien mutation? Maybe a step in genetic mutations that will lead to people having six fingers some day? Who knows?

For the most part, I rarely notice them. As a child it would come up in art classes when I had to trace my hand. We would often cut out the shape of our hand to create weird little turkeys for Thanksgiving or some other crafty project. Usually I would get a comment that I traced my hand wrong and screwed up the pinky. Then I would hold up my hand and show that I had in fact used my crayon to trace correctly. Go me. :P

It would also come up in math lessons when we had to measure our fingers. Strangely enough my teachers liked us to measure our pinkies. I had problems because I would have to shift the ruler mid-measurement. My teachers would just shake their head and say, “Do the best you can.”

As I got older I ran into some trouble when I played piano since my hands wouldn’t span over an octave like my piano teacher wanted. My right pinky would clip the one key to the left and you’d hear a little *ping* as it hit. I think if I worked at it I could have gotten over that, but the music thing didn’t stick with me as is. I’m great at listening to it though!

Since then though I usually forget I have the bent pinky quirk unless someone asks, “What did you do to your hand?” If I’m in a punchy mood you just may get a response like, “Oh, it’s a mark of my Plutonian race is all.” Hey, if we can’t have fun with genetic oddities then what’s the point, eh?

Until next time…

What it’s Like to Grow Up at West Point

Oct 092006
 

To start my series on “What it’s like to…,” I thought I would begin with the basics and a brief intro into where I grew up. I selected this topic because I always get funny looks from people when I tell them where I spent my childhood. “You mean people really live there?” Yes, yes we do.

My father was in the military band. He played the bassoon, was a drum major, and did all sorts of other things that I can’t even guess at. He served in the army for 30 years…29 of which were stationed at West Point. With that in mind, there are lots to tell about living there, but for now I will give you an brief intro.

The base is set up with the campus taking up a chunk of it. Small clusters of housing areas dot the rest of the area, and families are assigned to them based on the person in the military’s rank and job. The housing area I lived in was termed “Bandland,” since yes, we lived with members of the band. I’m not sure when that term came into existence. It just always was.

I equate living there to a 50s TV show. It had a small town feel where everyone knows everyone, which has its plusses and minuses. We knew who practiced their instruments and who didn’t. We knew what ninny was sleeping with some of the married men. And as far as the kids went, if we ever did something wrong, not five minutes would pass before one of our parents was called and we were tattled on.

The biggest thing about the neighborhood was that it was safe. We never locked our doors. I never even owned a key to the house. Why bother? If we went on vacation our neighbors would water our plants and bring in the mail. It’s how things worked there.
This time of the year is when I do get a little nostalgic for the place because Trick-or-Treating has never been the same. We were spoiled. There was no risk for us. We could play in the dark and never be concerned about the dangers that may or may not lurk about. We got bags of candy and home made goodies too!

My favorites were Mrs. Moon’s Moon Pies. She was a band wife, which means her husband worked in the band with my dad. And she lived right down the block from me. Mrs. Moon would make a ton of these fried dough circles with powdered sugar sprinkled on top. Then she fill a industrial sized laundry cart with them and every trick-or-treater would get one and only one. And no matter how many people came (which were a lot since anyone and everyone that could get to her would come) she would know if she’d seen you already that night. Some people ever tried to change costumes to trick her…but she knew. She always did!

I feel sorry for kids now (and even then) that don’t get to experience such things. I am grateful that I had that. It made for a nice childhood, albeit sheltered. But we were safe and really got to be kids. Plus we got to play on cannons and what kid doesn’t like that?

And well that’s that for now. Have a great day all!

What it Feels Like

Sep 272006
 

Back in June 2001, my dad tossed an Esquire Magazine in my lap and said, “Read.” I looked down and saw a naked Heidi Klum on the cover and rolled my eyes. But then I opened the magazine and started to read the feature article, “What it Feels Like.”

The article provided snippets of stories about what feels like to be gored by a bull, to get shot, to walk on the moon, and more. I’ll share Buzz Aldrin’s bit here:

“What it Feels Like to Walk on the Moon”

(As told to Mike Sager by Buzz Aldrin)

The surface of the moon was like fine talcum powder. It was very loose at the top. As you begin to get deeper, a half inch or so, it becomes much more compact almost as if it’s cemented together, though it isn’t. It just seems that way because there are no air molecules between the molecules of dust.

When you put your foot down in the powder, the bootprint preserved itself exquisitely. When I would take a step, a little semicircle of dust would spray out before me. It was odd, because the dust didn’t behave at all the way it behaves here on Earth. On Earth, you’re sometimes dealing with puffy dust, sometimes with sand. On the moon, what you’re dealing with is this powdery dust traveling through no air at all, so the dust is kicked up, and then it all falls at the same time in a perfect semicircle.

I’m trying the best I can to put it into words, but being on the moon is just different — different from anything you’ve ever seen. To use the word alien would mislead people. Surreal is probably as good a word as I have. When I looked out the window of the lunar lander as we touched down, the sun was out, the sky was velvety black, the engine was shut down, and everything was silent. That was surreal.

When you’re on the moon, there’s very little audio around you, only the sounds of your suit — the hum of pumps circulating fluid. But you don’t hear any amplified breathing inside your mask; that’s a Hollywood contrivance. The name of the game on the moon is stay cool and don’t exert too much so you’re never out of breath.

If you remember the television images we sent back, you know that I was attempting to demonstrate different walking motions, going back and forth in front of the camera. I tried what you might call a kangaroo hop, and then I demonstrated how you needed a few steps to change direction because of the inertia that you have up there. I found that the best way to move around at a fairly good clip was not by using a jogging motion — one foot, then the other — but rather by moving more the way a horse gallops: one-two, one-two, two steps in rapid succession, followed by a lope, followed by two or more rapid steps.

And then there’s the picture where I’m standing next to the flag. If you notice, I’m leaning forward a good bit because of the center of gravity of the backpack I’m wearing. On the moon, it’s sometimes hard to tell when you might be on the verge of losing your balance. As you lean a little bit to one side or the other, you come in danger of falling. But it’s easy to right yourself by pushing down on the surface with your feet. The lunar surface is so easy, so natural, so readily adapted to be any human being. The low gravity makes it very convenient to get around. It’s really a very nice environment.

While we were on the moon, there wasn’t time to savor the moment. It seemed as though what we were doing was so significant that to pause for a moment and reflect metaphysically was really contrary to our mission. We weren’t trained to smell the roses. We weren’t hired to utter philosophical truisms on the spur of the moment. We had a job to do.

I do remember that one realization wafted through my mind when I was up there. I noted that here were two guys farther away from anything than two guys had ever been before. That’s what I thought about. And yet, at the same time, I was very conscious that everything was being closely scrutinized a quarter of a million miles away.

Everything and anything we did would be recorded, remembered, studied for ages. It felt a little like being the young kid in the third or fourth grade who is all of a sudden asked to go up on stage in front of the whole school and recite the Gettysburg Address. And as he tries to remember the words, he’s got gun-barrel vision. He’s not seeing what’s going on around him; he’s focused on that particular task, conscious only of his performance. It was like that but even more so. The eyes of the world were on us, and if we made a mistake, we would regret it for quite a while.

I guess, if I look back on things, there was one little moment of levity, a bit of unusual extemporaneousness. When the countdown came to lift off from the moon, when it got to twenty seconds, Houston said, “Tranquility Base, you’re cleared for liftoff.” And I said in response: “Roger, we’re number one on the runway.” Now, comedy is the absurd put into a natural position. There was no runway up there. And there certainly wasn’t anyone else waiting in line to lift off. I was conscious of that, of being first.

———————————————————————

They’ve since collected the articles and compiled them in to a book, Esquire Presents: What It Feels Like. I have not checked the book out yet, but I will in time.

I find these snippets interesting to read, but they are also so very grand. The idea of that has inspired me to bring it down to a smaller everyday man level. Periodically, (I’d say weekly but time sometimes I run out of time) I will be posting snippets of “What it’s like to…” do anything from growing up on a military base to getting bit by a dog to anything in between. I’m not sure where this project will go, but it forces me to write and I think it will be fun. If you have ideas, please feel free to send them my way.

And that’s that. A grand day to you. May it be simply…fun.