Page 30 of Playing With Forever

Josie’s eyes narrowed. “Violence doesn’t solve problems.”

I had nothing to say to that, mainly because I could feel the ground getting shaky, and my response would likely cause a full-blown quake.

“You think violence solves problems?” she pushed.

Fuck.

“I think violence should be used as a last resort—unless your life is in danger, then it’s the first. But I also think there’s a time and place for a boy⁠—”

“If you say for a boy to be a boy, I might scream.”

“Then prep those vocal cords, baby,” I warned. “For a boy to figure out what kind of man he’s going to be, there are going to be bumps in the road. Your boy at twelve heard his mother being disrespected. He didn’t like the way that made him feel. Undoubtedly, he loves his momma. At twelve, he doesn’t have the self-control or fully developed reasoning skills to resolve the conflict the way, say, a sixteen-year-old does, or an adult. In the moment, he did what his twelve-year-old mind told him to do—protect his momma. Now it was up to the adults in his life to explain to him when punching someone in the face is appropriate and when it’s not.”

“There are times when punching someone in the face is appropriate?”

Oh, yeah, the ground was beginning to quake.

“Let me ask you this; say, Lindy’s out with a group of friends and some guy grabs her. She tries to pull her arm away and asks him to let her go and he starts dragging her away from her friends. Should she punch him in the face?”

“Absolutely.”

“Right. So say we were out and a man grabbed you in a way you didn’t like, I told him to let you go, and he didn’t. Would you be pissed if I put my hands on him?”

She worried her bottom lip but didn’t say anything.

“There’s a time and place for violence. You don’t have to like it, but there is, and to say there isn’t is not only naïve, it’s dangerous. It tells our daughters it’s not okay to beat the absolute hell out of anyone who touches them in a way they didn’t consent to. It teaches our sons not to step up and protect those who cannot protect themselves.

“Straight up, Josie, I’m not lying when I tell you if a man put his hands on you, he would not be walking the next day. If a man was disrespecting you verbally and I couldn’t remove you from the situation or get him to stop, he’d be eating his teeth.”

“That’s assault,” she muttered.

“And?”

“You’re a cop.”

“Yeah, and I became a cop for a reason. Protect and serve. The protect part of that coming first. So, think about this, if I go to work to protect and serve a bunch of strangers, how do you think I’m going to be with those I care about?”

She closed her eyes and very quietly told me, “I see the repercussions of violence every day at the center.”

Christ, she not only believed that, but she felt that deeply.

“No, Josie, what you see is the repercussions of the cycle. Men and women who raise their hand to a child in anger and harm them are either broken due to generational abuse or they didn’t have good, strong adults around them to teach them healthy ways to deal with anger. I cannot imagine you didn’t speak to DJ after he hit that boy and explain to him how to better deal with his feelings. Do not mistake protection for abuse. A man slapping his wife around because he's too weak and broken to control himself is not the same as me raising my fist to a man in protection of someone I care about.”

“You’re right, they’re not the same. And you’re also right, I did speak to DJ, and he was punished for what he did.”

I nodded, even though if I had a son, I would’ve spent time and a lot of it teaching him when to use his fists and when not to, but I wouldn’t have punished him for sticking up for his mother. That was if his mother was Josie.

“You don’t think I should’ve punished him,” she muttered, reading my mind.

“I think you did a damn fine job raising your boys into men.”

She smirked but shook her head. “You can’t know that, you’ve never met them.”

“I don’t need to meet them to know. There’s no way you’d beam with pride the way you do when you speak about them if they were not exceptional men.”

That earned me a bright smile, which made what I had to do next suck more than it normally would.

“You up for talking about your ex?” I asked.