the daring book for girls

My father worked shifts and my mother refused to get her license so most of the time when us kids would have soccer or swimming lessons, scouts or girl guides or play dates or emergencies my Uncle Drew would drive us. Uncle Drew was some kind of policeman, a crime hating, robber fighting good kind of guy, my dad used to say about his brother-in-law. I don’t know what Uncle Drew did exactly but he had a radio in his special undercover car that he freighted us to and from in. It was secret, he wasn’t supposed be carrying children around while he was on the job chasing down the bad guys.

“What kind of bad guy are you chasing Uncle Drew?” My brother would ask from between the duffel bags of equipment in the back seat of the van. “The kind that wear all black or the kind that wear a disguise?”

“Today,” Uncle Drew would say to us, speeding the way only a cop can speed; knowing that he is the rules, the law and the enforcement and therefore he is invincible. “Today my job is still a secret Michael, and I still won’t tell you.”

Michael would sigh and then quickly revert to not paying attention to such notions of secrecy and exclusivity that he could not participate in. “Can I see your gun Uncle Drew? I know you have one, all cops have a gun. Cops probably have six guns each.”

The radio would crackle and voices interrupted, calls to Uncle Drew and calls to other roaming police officers. “The boyfriends back,” the radio might hiss. I was always jealous that these anonymous people who lived between frequencies in some kind of fictional city had their lives broadcasted to the police. Their shards of glass lives digging into everyone’s palms. I thought that these radio people with their dangerous boyfriends and drive by shootings lived in a television world, with gunshots and accidents, sirens and smoke inhalation. I had people who cared about me, but they got to have extra people care about them, like my Uncle Drew. I knew when I grew up that I would be a character on the policeman radio show. I would move into the dirty gritty city and watch buildings fall and men in black ski masks hold up banks and try to grab old lady purses. Later my Uncle Drew changed departments and sat behind a desk all day and brother lost interest in guns and bad guys and we were old enough to take the bus. I thought that in order to get more people to care about me I should do dangerous things. Thus began my summer of wild.