I went to work with my husband Sunday night.  He’s a cop in Wyoming, Michigan and I love to ride with him because the view from his side of the world is fascinating. Officer Dave’s office is his car, where his front seat includes radar, a computer, an e-ticket printer, a laser gun, a radio, a video camera – and not one but two really big guns. He wears about 15 pounds of equipment on his belt: a gun (yes, another one), a flashlight, a taser, handcuffs, ammunition, two phones, and a radio – and he has a persistent bruise above his right hip from the holster that jams into him every time he gets in and out of his car. He’s also got more experience slammed into that car than you can imagine: he’s an accident reconstructionist who gets called on the scene to determine how cars managed to slam into each other and kill people. He’s an expert driving instructor and motorcyclist, a sniper, a member of Wyoming’s TACT team, a motor carrier enforcement officer, a trained magistrate and is certified to teach in 21 different areas of law enforcement. He’s the real deal.

So here’s what riding with Officer Dave is like: at least half the time we are just riding around, looking at license plates (even I get giddy when I see one that’s expired!) and trucks (hey, is that a chafing hose?).  Really, it’s pretty boring.  But Sunday night we’re shooting the breeze with a couple of kids riding mopeds. (Dave wanted to know if they’d be interested in going to a moped safety class and they were so darned relieved that he wasn’t asking for their license that they said yes).

All of a sudden Dave says “Gotta go” and we are flying out of the parking lot at about a gazillion miles an hour, lights ablaze and sirens screaming past traffic, through intersections (one of the scariest things a cop does – darn drivers just don’t seem to know what to do – MOVE TO THE RIGHT, PEOPLE), racing to the scene of what the dispatcher says is a felonious assault with a hammer.  I am slammed up against the computer and wondering if there’s a barf bag in the car. We screech to a stop along with two other police cars and Dave leaps out of the car.  My heart is racing from the adrenaline rush.

Five minutes later Dave walks back to the car – laughing.  Turns out a couple of kids were cracking nuts in the parking lot with a hammer, so we raced across town … for a felonious assault on a walnut.

I complain – just a little – about the danger of the cross-town speed racer ride. And he reminds me that the wild ride across town is essential: “If you were being assaulted, wouldn’t you want us to get there just as fast as we possibly could?”

So I say yes, of course – and then ask if we can put barf bags in the car for my next ride-along.