L and the stakeout.

The worst part of my internship is the stakeout. We sit outside someone's address in a hybrid car in a sketchy part of town, sticking out like a sore thumb. It's hours of boredom, punctuated only by a few seconds here and there of fear of getting carjacked. It's no wonder why police officers eat so much... when you're sitting in a car, unable to read or sleep because doing either may distract you from watching the streets, all you really want to do is eat food. 

Last night was one of the worst. We had been on this guy for weeks. The previous investigators had been trying to find him for about half a year. We had reason to believe we were finally closing in on him. We started at 8 p.m. and watched his house until 11:30 p.m. He never showed. It was exhausting, boring and frustrating. 

Z drove me home. We were both upset and tired, so when someone in the car across from us was gesturing at us and shouting, Z gave him the finger. Later, we realized that our headlights were off; the man in the car had been trying to help us. 

In that moment, I found a little bit of my answer to that age-old question, why violence? Take what happened in that car to an extreme. Imagine a life of frustration, exhaustion, and even boredom. Then you perceive someone disrespecting you, and suddenly you have a target to focus all that frustration on. You're angry at your life, your bad luck, your circumstances, and you can pour all that anger into a person at that point in time. And maybe that anger is transformed into an action. And if you have a weapon, a very grave action.  

Why violence? Maybe it's a product of the lives we have led and a simple misperception at an unfortunate moment in time. 

P.S. A new roommate, R moved in today. He's a graduate student at the same university my brother attends. He seems nice.