The first writing challenge for the blogathon is to tell a story about a rookie mistake my husband may have made or a time that he was totally embarassed as a rookie. Here's the full challenge and another leo wife's story - it's a good one!
I called Jake (he's working today) and asked him about this. Of course, his first response is that he didn't make mistakes, of course. Ummm, sure. Anyway, he finally reminded me the story of the rusty gun at the Academy.
When Jake was a few months in the Academy, there came the day that they were issued their work guns. Everyone was handed a shiny new box that contained a brand new 9mm - or so Jake thought. As he opened his new box, he was totally surprised to see an old, rusty, falling apart, piece-of-crap 38.
"What the...?" he was thinking, looking around at this classmate, who were all inspecting their shiny new 9mms without a problem. The Academy is like the military - you don't talk back, you don't question your superiors, etc. He was really hesitant to say anything, but figured there had to have been a mistake, so tenatively approached his superior. And got reamed out for complaining about the gun he was given, was ordered that he was to use and like using it, etc etc. He shut up, totally embarassed and went through the entire next day or two with the POS gun in his Sam Brown, worrying that pieces would fall off and having no idea what to do next.
His classmates were not help, either. They were all glad they didn't get that gun, agreed that it was horrible, but no one wanted to stick up for him and put their neck on the line. Finally, on the second day, the training officer's made him stand in front of the class and demonstrate something like loading or whatever to the class with his POS gun. As he's struggling to do this, while grabbing rusty pieces as they fall off, finally the training officer loses his poker face and starts to crack up.
Jake was informed that the gun was compliments of a relative of his, who was currently on the job and tight buddies with the training officers in the Academy. It was all a great joke at Jake's expense. Poor guy thought he was going to have to carry that thing for the next few months.
Apparently that gun is infamous at the Academy and it's used often for just this sort of thing. Everyone got a good laugh and Jake was relieved at the end of it all to get his own brand new work-issue 9mm. And it was so embarassing for him that he remembers it in great clarity, even today, over 20 years later.
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