rigadoon

There are days when I feel completely out of touch with the world I live in, days when I feel alien, foreign, a tourist to a loud, abrasive city.

Today is one of those days.


So my little brother (he's 17) and his 14 year old friend apparently were playing around in an abandoned house yesterday and someone called the police to report them trespassing. When the cops got to them, they were already blocks away and my brother had an old saw in his hand. He said he'd found it in a dumpster. The cops wouldn't listen. They insisted that he'd stolen it from the house. They handcuffed them and proceeded to start ridiculing my brother, taking his hat off and throwing it back and forth, making fun of my brothers shaking hands, taking condoms and letters (to my brother's girlfriend) out of my brothers wallet, reading the letters outloud and laughing and apparently, some older man drove by and congratulated the cops on getting "filth" off the streets. One of the cops turned his back on my brother, made his fists into a gun and pretended to shoot my brother.

My heart hurts right now. How power can transform people scares me. The smallest ounce of authority and suddenly grown men are bullying a 17 year old kid. It makes me sick.