I keep thinking about the kid sitting on the hood of the cop car just off Farm to Market road, the same road where last weekend someone hit one of the poles holding up the power lines, splintering it so that the top two thirds leaned out over the road, held there by lines staked out in someone's pasture until it was Monday again and time for someone to collect a paycheck fixing shit like that.

Once someone's up on the hood of the cop car, what is there to do? The opportunity to help out has passed. You can stop for a flat tire, but who's gonna say Officer what's the problem here? When that teenager ran into Farm to Market Bakery in the middle of the night this winter, busting through the guard rail and crushing the whole southwest corner of the building, someone told him they had called the cops and he, drunk as he was, said, It's okay, you don't have to call the cops, I just called my dad. Too late dude, the opportunity for dad to help has passed.

I think about the Occupy movement, how that whole thing is about saying Officer what's the problem here, in a sense. On Facebook someone posts a photo of a young white woman with dreadlocks, Missing. She's an Occupyer, it says, last seen at NATO protest. I see from her face that I don't know her, haven't seen her, don't know anyone with dreadlocks any more.