What a Girl Does for Fun...and Research

I enjoy researching for a story. Little tidbits of information I'll never use for anything remains with me long after the important stuff is forgotten. Why is that? If it's useful, it's gone faster than good sense, but if it's worthless trivia, it's tattooed on my consciousness like a red heart professing my undying love for Billy Bob. Still, being the eternal optimistic-cynic I am, I keep reading and copying and pasting as if I will actually remember to look at my notes when the time comes to use my pretty flowers I've spent the better part of the week weeding from websites, books and newspapers.

However, every now and then, the best, most wonderful, fun-filled waste of time comes along I can claim as research. This week, I'm digging police scanners. Yes, that's right, my local city police. I found the call...codes? thingies?...for my local public safety departments on a website, copied them to my writing software under the notes tab, and have happily spent HOURS scrolling up and down to figure out what's being said in this foreign tongue. I can sit at my computer, find that Charlie 56 is 10-76, 10-39, 10-15, 66. Translated: Car 56 is en route with lights and sirens to a civil disturbance involving a UFO sighting. Okay, I've not really heard that one, but I'm not giving up.

And for exercise to offset my hours of sedentary aural voyeurism, whenever one the officers reports he's going down my street, I throw off my headphones, jump up, and run to the front of my house where I scurry from window to window like a squirrel harvesting nuts on a tight schedule. I should wave, but they don't know I'm spying on them. If they did, I would probably get my own little stack of codes: 10-96, 15C, 10-95, 70. Mental subject, keeps trying to hug officer and tell him he's better looking than he sounds on the radio, subject in custody, transporting prisoner. I assume the trip would terminate at the county detention center. I fear my male unit would leave me there.

I've even found the jail roster. I know people.... Not well. No family or friends. Still, oh my!

I'm having way too much fun.

The sad news is that I'll probably never use a single local call code in my story, but my excuse is that listening gives me, ya know, the flavor of how police operate. Eventually, I might even get back to writing...when I'm over this fixation.

In the meantime, I'm impressed by the professionalism of my local police and how proficient they are juggling a constant stream of calls ranging from ridiculous to tragic. My favorite call so far was last night. A man was exposing himself. Dispatch notified the nearest car. The officer's voice when he replied, "En route", was worth a whole box of doughnuts.

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