STORY BEHIND THE POEM A POX ON THEE
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Peter Groenland (Pronounced Greenland),
works a specialty car called Car 87. This is a unit that teams a police
officer with a psychiatric nurse and their job is to deal with mentally
disturbed persons in the city. They work hard and in addition to doing
their own caseload they take referals from other polcie units, and cover
those units on calls in their spare time.
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Because Car 87 has become such a needed
unit, when Peter takes time off for holidays or sick, a Sergeant has to
find a temporary replacement for him. Now, tasks like this usually fall
on the shoulders of the most junior (in seniority) of officers working
patrol. It is an unpleasant job dealing with mentally disturbed persons
all the time, and most junior officers are what we call keeners and would
rather work patrol than almost anywhere else. In addition most patrol squads
are so shorthanded that giving up someone is next to impossible, so it
becomes a real chore for the Sergeant to find replacements.
.
But I digress. Peter phoned in sick one
day saying that he was covered in spots and itchy as anything. His self
diagnosis was chicken pox, which I assume he did not have as a child. Chicken
pox in an adult, as most of you know can be very painful and very dangerous.
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Well after sweating for hours the Sergeant
had managed to find replacements for every one of Peter’s shifts for several
weeks. In the interim, Peter went to the Doctor, and discovered he did
not have Chicken pox, but had managed to pick up a family of fleas. Nobody
knows if he got them from a family pet or one of his clients.
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Peter was relieved? Well, I guess fleas
are better than adult chicken pox, but I fail to see how. There’s no word
on how the Sergeant felt when his efforts went in vain. It goes without
saying how all Peter’s replacements felt. Anyway, while the whole situation
itself was funny enough (you had to be there I guess), the diagnosis of
fleas sort of finished it off. Besides, I haven’t had anything to write
about for awhile due to holidays, and lots of people were asking when the
next one would come out, so I took this opportunity and a poem was born.
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