Story by Gregor Stronach

I have two children.

I can remember a time when I had none. It was a blissful time of late nights, binge drinking and being glued, zombie-like, to the TV watching COPS with the sound down so as not to wake my wife.

These were Good Times.

But now, I have two children. My life is now overtaken with late nights spent feeding Son No. 2, and scoffing whisky in the Golden Hour between Son No. 1 being placed comatose in his cot, and my own bedtime, only to be woken a few precious hours later with the beginnings of the dreaded Scottish hangover, so I can sit on the couch like a zombie, and watch COPS with the sound down so as not to scar Son No. 2 for life.

So… nothing much has changed.

I like watching COPS. Actually, I love it. It’s not the gritty realism, nor is it the unbridled machismo of the heavily-armed “men and women of law enforcement” dealing with the life and death situations that they call ‘work’.

It’s the elevated feeling of self-worth that comes from watching the slack-jawed denizens of the US of A as they show the world precisely what a vacuum of infinite stupidity and hopelessness looks like. Black holes of idiocy, so tremendously dumb that not even irony can escape their gravitational pull.

COPS isn’t a TV show. It’s a funeral procession – a 30-minute long parade, casket held aloft on the shoulders of police and sheriff’s uniforms. And in that casket is the Great American Dream, embalmed in a blend of 40-ounce bottles of rot-gut liquor, cranked up by a liberal sprinkling of crack cocaine and methamphetamine shards.

From the shambling, mumbling hookers who hawk their tawdry wares along the hard shoulders of the interstate, to the inevitable Angry Young Man with a bad haircut and a drug habit that would put Elvis to shame, it’s a free-wheeling circus of violence and crime.

Gap-toothed, and desperate, they are. You can see the fear, and occasionally rage, in their eyes as they gawp gormlessly at the camera, before breaking every single cardinal rule about being arrested. Not only do they speak openly about their crimes to the police, but they do so on camera – filmed to be broadcast, and have their immeasurably dim brains beamed into the living rooms of people around the world.

People like me. People who watch them for entertainment. People who watch them for sport. I feel like a Roman, watching slaves being put to the sword in a coliseum. And I feel no regret.

I only share the surge of adrenalin that the officers clearly feel, as they huff and puff like unfit wolves in pursuit of society’s little pigs. Miked up for the camera, they produce noises not unlike poorly stuffed punching bags, accepting punishment at the hands of Ju-Jitsu masters. Oof oof oof, with a staccato jangle of handcuffs that mimick the chains that hold Everlast bags aloft in gymnasiums throughout the world.

Invariably, the pursuit ends with a wrestle. A solid, manly, no-holds-barred-and-definitely-not-gay struggle for freedom. The police fight with tactical weapons – they fell the felons with long-range electrical probes, tenderize those fallen with night sticks and batons, before flavouring them with capsicum spray and trussing them up with metallic adornments designed specifically to deny freedom, and steal dignity – like a Thanksgiving turkey bound for the oven of justice.

Those hell-bent on decamping the scene fight like cornered wolverines, amped up by alcohol and whatever pharmaceuticals their dealers have managed to cook in the bathtubs and bottle-labs, bagged up and sold. Their eyes roll wildly in their sockets, arms pinwheel and legs flail.

The script is more often than not, the same.

“Stop hurting me!” they will shriek.

“Stop resisting!” comes the reply.

“I’m not resisting! You’re breaking my arm!”

“Stop. Resisting.” – this is universally uttered through gritted teeth, often punctuated by insistent grunts that signify the landing of a non-fatal blow to a part of the body known for being both soft and exquisitely painful when tampered with.

The police then stuff their prey into the back of their vehicle with the care and attention of a postal worker stacking a warehouse of boxes marked “Fragile” – indeed, if the felons bore stickers crying “This Way Up”, they too would be cheerfully ignored.

And then suddenly, it is over. A strange calm befalls the living room, while the officer in charge drones on about how much he loves his job. The magic, like the drugs that fuel one half of the combatants, wears off – the spell broken by the sudden and shocking insistence of a white-toothed, well-groomed idiot practically begging me to purchase not one, but two steam mops that I know I will never use.

Then the bottle clamped between the rosebud lips of my infant son makes a sound: Pfuff Pfuff Pfuff, it goes. That tells me he’s done. The bottle is dry.

I hoist him to my shoulder, and through a semi-conscious limp satiety he lets roar a thunderous belch, blasting foul, milky air past my ear and depositing the glug of half-digested breastmilk down the shoulder of my only clean pyjamas.

I wrap him – swaddle him like an infant messiah – and gently, oh-so-quietly, we tiptoe together to his room.

I place him with all of the care and love I can muster. My precious, precious cargo. A brush of my lips across his forehead to let him know I love him. One last glance stolen as I creep from the crib.

A sly shot of whisky. A warm bed awaits.

I remember when I didn’t have children. They were, indeed, Good Times.

But nothing – absolutely nothing – will sway me from the understanding that my life, right now, is blessed beyond belief by the presence of my two little boys.

And on the days I feel run down – neglecting myself, and feeling near death through fatigue, the antidote is simple.

“I’ll feed Tobias tonight, my love,” I’ll say. He’s a well-trained boy.

He wakes for his feed when COPS is on. And the circle of life turns once more.