Roy Exum
Last Thursday morning, when Harris County deputy Tommi Jones Kelly pulled her cruiser into a station to get gas, it was raining pretty steadily in southeastern Texas. But that’s part of the job and she couldn’t tarry, so she went to the pump and noticed a teenager approach her from behind.
You’ll remember a couple of weeks ago another deputy in uniform was gunned down in Houston, so Deputy Kelley turned to study the boy because the scenario was all too familiar, according to news reports.
“Ma’am, do you mind if I stand behind you while you are getting your gas?”
A bit unnerved by the boy who apparently wasn’t smart enough to get out of the rain, the deputy distinctly remembers asking, “And why?”
“To make sure you are safe.”
After she finished filling the squad-car tank, she stepped towards her front door and noticed the boy – who hadn’t spoken a word as he stood sentinel – getting into the passenger side of a car nearby. Deputy Kelley approached the car where the wet boy sat and asked the driver, “Are you his mom?”
When the woman said she was, with a smile, the deputy told her. “You have an amazing son,” and the boy’s mother said, “He just wanted to make sure no one was going to hurt you.”
“Yes, I’m the one with the gun on my hip and he stood in the rain, empty-handed, but he for sure had my ‘6’ while my back was turned,” she posted on Facebook. “With all the terror going nationwide, this reassured me there are still some pretty awesome individuals out there.”
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Sunday a week ago Jake Arrieta, a standout pitcher for the Chicago Cubs, threw a no-hit game against the Dodgers in Los Angeles. After his teammates mobbed him, the joyous Cubs pranced to the locker room, grateful for a 2-0 win in fabled Chavez Ravine.
But soon there came a knock on the door. It was a member of the Dodgers’ ground crew and he was carrying a 60-pound gift from the home team – the heavy pitching rubber where Arrieta had launched his no hitter. And not just that – there was a bucket of dirt from the same pitching mound and a box of baseballs that Dodger officials promised had been used in the game to give his friends.
The Cubs were floored by the random act of kindness. “Really nice gesture,” Arrietta told reporters. “That’s something I’ll cherish as much or more than anything I’ve been given in the process.”
If the Los Angeles Dodgers can act so wonderfully on the spur of the moment, why can’t we all?
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It’s hypothetical, of course, but what if jailed Kentucky court clerk Kim Davis had been a Muslim? CNN host Michael Smerconish was serious when he asked on his show Saturday: “Is this woman in jail because she was denied her religious freedom? Or, is she more like an American version of the Taliban?”
Here’s his reasoning: He insists the Taliban is also guided by faith. His guest, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, told the show host, “Their faith is like a GPS that guides every turn they take,” said Perkins, “And, historically we have accommodated them.” Smerconish added, “Respectfully, it reminds me of what we’re fighting overseas.”
You’ll also be interested to know that the infamous Westboro Baptist Church has gotten in on the act, attacking Ms. Davis over her three divorces and the fact she is married for a fourth time.
Westboro, nationally reviled for its argument that God is punishing America for accommodating homosexuality, wants the Bible-studying clerk to read Jeremiah 3:20, which tells us, "Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith the LORD"
A church Tweet further said, "Get this straight: you can NOT repent of a sin you actively live. Kim must leave that man who's not her husband.”
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For years Fred Shuemake was a detective in southeastern Ohio who investigated crimes against children, so he and his grief-stricken wife had “no hesitation” in bravely directing a funeral home to begin their teen-aged daughter Allison’s obituary with the horrifying words, “She died of a heroin overdose.”
Both Allison and her boyfriend, David Combs, were found dead two weeks ago and his obituary said the same thing. “We’ve seen other deaths when it is heroin, and families don’t talk about it because they are ashamed or feel guilty,” said Allison’s mother Dorothy, “Shame doesn’t matter right now.”
“What really matters is keeping some other person, especially a child, from trying (heroin.) We don’t want anybody else to feel the same agony and wretchedness that we are left with,” said Allison’s mother.
Middletown, Ohio, is headed towards a record-breaking year of heroin-related deaths – the Butler County coroner’s statistics show a jump from 30 two years ago to 103 in 2014 and already there have been 86 in the first six months of 2015. The deaths have shattered the community. Nationally, the CDC says heroin-related deaths have quadrupled in the last decade.
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“Voices from the Heart,” an alternative choir of 200 women, sang at a rally for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Saturday in New Hampshire and, when the ladies sang the old African-American spiritual, “Woke Up The Morning (With My Mind On Jesus),” they changed the words, replacing “Jesus” with “Hillary.”
“Woke up this mornin’ with my mind, stayin’ on Hillary,
“Woke up this mornin’ with my mind, stayin’ on Hillary,
“Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelu, Hallelujah!”
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The best Tweet last week was probably the one that read, “I hacked the database of Ashley Home Furniture in Madison, WI, and I swear I'll release names unless you give me a poorly-made sectional sofa.”
royexum@aol.com