April 16: Beth and Melanie return to the Sheriff’s Office and sit in the back row, to no avail

On the way to this week’s class, I explained my masterful plan to Beth:

“Last week, the people in the back row just wouldn’t stop talking. They were right behind us, talking the whole time.”

Beth said, “I really feel that it is demeaning to me, as an adult, to have to tell other adults to be quiet.”

And so, in accordance with my plan, we sat in the back row this week. Not the second-to-back row. The absolute back. See how the talkers dealt with that!

It should have worked.

What I did not expect was that the people who sat down near us last week would assume that we were in the same spot this week, and park themselves one row back, as well. Which put Beth right next to. . .

Tangentia.

Tangentia is perhaps five feet tall and shaped like a beach ball with feet. And at some point in her life, she fell into a vat of toxic waste which severed the connections between key areas of her brain, so that she is unable to follow any thought all the way to the end. This is her superpower. She can free-associate with supernatural proficiency.

A transcript of Beth’s interaction with Tangentia (which began in medias res, despite Beth’s attempts to avoid eye contact):

Tangentia: “Do you believe this? They tried to bill me for this, and I said no, because I already paid it, and now they want to give me a check and I said I’m not cashing it, oh no, because you guys did this to me before, and how am I supposed to deal with this every single time?”

Beth: “Mm-hm. . .”

Tangentia: “They always do this to you, and then you go to the bank and they want to know why you have it, but banks are always like that, and anyway I wanted to cash the check but I still had to pay this other bill, you know how they are!”

Beth (leaning away and digging in her purse in a desperate bid for freedom): “Mm-hm. . .”

Tangentia: “So I finally got the check cashed and then I had to take my cat – this is my new cat, not my old cat, you understand – but my old cat was just like. . . Do you watch Animal Planet?”

Beth (staring at the ceiling and praying for divine intervention): “Mm-hm. . .”

Divine intervention granted! Another classmate sat down in front of us and politely asked Tangentia about her cat. Boy, was that a mistake. Beth, however, took the opportunity to dig about fifty pens out of her purse, plus a bottle of glasses cleaner, and a few other things that I didn’t get a good look at, because they were buried deep in the fistful of pens. Then the pens went back in and she triumphantly pulled out a fuzzy thing on a keychain.

“Keychain monkey?” She asked me.

I looked at the keychain monkey. It was a pale tan, with dark brown hands, feet and face, and it was about the size of a golf ball. It had long arms, so I chose to believe it was, in fact, a monkey.

Beth made the monkey do a little dance over the top of her purse.

Meanwhile, the discussion around us had moved on to dogs. The former US Marshall had two rescue dogs – golden labrador retrievers – named “Pancake” and “Waffle.” The old guy who used to be in the Army had a beagle that was originally part of a group of dogs sold for animal testing. He showed us a photo of the beagle. It was adorable.

Old Army Guy: “It was terrible, what they did to those animals. It was just terrible.”

Tangentia: “Can I ask you a question? Would it be okay if I asked you a kind of. . . can I ask you something?”

Old Army Guy: “Sure.”

Tangentia: “Are they Amish?”

Other gems from Tangentia: “I foster cats. I had something like twenty cats at one point. There was this one cat, she was older, you know, maybe eighteen or nineteen, and she had an awful personality. Her name was Princess Petal Pearl. She was feral, you know, but you can find out their names when they have tags, and she had a tag. She had a horrible personality. I don’t know how many people got scratches on their hands. But I loved her. You know, the guy who found her, when he found her she was lying on the blacktop on Sandy Boulevard on a really hot day, and he thought she was dead, so he went and got a shovel.”

And, when someone asked Beth about her dogs:

Tangentia: “Do you remember that woman, she has a shaved head?”

Beth: “. . . Susan Powter?”

Tangentia: “That’s her! Susan Powter. Do you know how to get ahold of her?”

My friends, the class hadn’t even started yet.

Meanwhile, Old Army Guy was practially bouncing in his seat. He was hoping he’d have a chance to use his favorite one-liner again this week. Happily, he got his opportunity:

Classmate: “Is anybody sitting in this seat?”

Old Army Guy: “You are!!”

Only 6:45 p.m., but by now, Beth could only cope by singing Whitney Houston classics under her breath: “I’m savin’ all the chairs for youuuu. . .”

By now, most of the class had filed in and taken seats at the long tables, including Animal Control Girl, who was in her green sheriff shirt rather than her black jacket. She had shoulders like a pro linebacker. Forget wolverines. I think Animal Control Girl spent her formative years wrestling alligators.

At last, Sergeant Handsome strode to the front of the room. I should explain here that Sergeant Handsome is on the pudgy side. And yet, his appeal is not much diminished in my eyes. I’m willing to cut him some slack, because he isn’t currently out there policing, thanks to some kind of foot injury that has him chained to the desk. And desperate enough to host this year’s Civilian Academy.

Someone in class asked Sergeant Handsome how his foot was doing. The foot is apparently healing nicely.

I leaned over and whispered to Beth, “Who do you think is going to mention the coffee and cookies first?”

Sadly, there was no mention of coffee and cookies. This did not prevent Beth from snagging a cookie. Tangentia requires a buffer, and it was brought home to us last week that alcohol is not an option.

Sergeant Handsome stood at the front of the class and beamed proudly at us. “You guys look so good in your shirts!”

We certainly did. We looked downright tough. Especially Beth, as she had received a shirt that fit her and had put the monkey back in her purse. In fact, taken altogether, I’d say we looked about as tough as a predominately geriatric group of people in green polo shirts could look.

Sergeant Handsome then introduced our first instructor of the evening: Duncan Hoss, Chief of the Civil Branch.

“I like his name,” Beth said. “Duncan Hoss.“

Let me just say, the unusual name should have warned us.

Thus ends Part One! Next up: compromising pictures of Sheriff Horch.