One time, another deputy and I were called to a bar for a disturbance, and upon arrival learned that my own grandmother got into a drunken altercation with another intoxicated senior citizen before throwing a bar stool through the front window. Resisting the urge to high-five her on the spot, we instead took both parties in for public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and vandalism.

Gordana Sermek/iStock/Getty Images

Continue Reading Below Advertisement

I let my partner do the actual arresting, because I didn't want to get uninvited from Thanksgiving dinner on account of booking the cook. Don't get me wrong: If it'd been just me on the scene, I'd have slammed the cuffs on Nana hard enough to tweak her $5-birthday-check-writing wrists. The law is the fucking law.

That's a phrase I got used to saying a lot, especially while explaining to ex-classmates that no, I could not let them off with a warning for doing 60 in a 25 because "we went to school together!" Well, yeah. It's a small town. Everybody went to school together -- there's only one damn school. That familiarity came up a lot. I became a deputy when I was 19, so when I showed up to a party with my school chums, everybody hid in the bushes and waited for the cops to leave. Now, I won't say that I didn't enjoy handing tickets to some of these people ...