LAW AND ORDER: PERSONAL OFFENSE TEAM

With the amount of strident and invective rhetoric in the social media and elsewhere, there needs to be a way to determine if someone is truly and rightly offended or if they are just overly sensitive about all that they hold to be true. Apparently, hurt feelings are the most heinous of wounds. I'm talking about the personal offenses that occur daily in the war of opinions, beliefs, social classes, political agendas, and critical reviews not to mention the battle for superior knowledge and the ultimate in refined taste. 

This is a good perspective, but I'm not sure if anyone can stay so focused. To me, it's another one of those damned paradoxes of life. We might all save our offenses for the BIG, LIFE AND DEATH realities, but they aren't that easy to change. Maybe that's why we can become so invested in LESSER offenses like just about everything on Days of Our Lives. Come on Abigail! Get your act together. Are you going to be a little tramp all the days of your life?

I don't watch Law and Order: Special Victims Unit very often. But when I do, I fall in love with Mariska Hargitay all over again. Perhaps if I didn't, I'd watch more. But maybe not. I'm more of a Hallmark: Crimes Of The Heart kind of viewer. But things like murder and sexual assault need every bit of the attention they can get.  The way I figure it, the more special units the fewer traffic cops and highway patrolmen with radar guns. ...A win-win for everyone. 

So the idea of a special personal offense team or POT doesn't seem that far fetched. Of course there would have to be the obligatory couple of detectives but beyond that, the team should have a counselor or two, and a pawnbroker. (who knows better than someone who doesn't mind capitalizing on your valuable possessions) If one isn't available someone from the IRS would do. Others should be added as the need is made clear. Right now, personal offenses are a moving target. 

"It's a PO if I say it's a PO" seems to be standard of determination at this point. The other point is how many are laughing. Interestingly, what an enemy does is offensive no matter what. When a friend does the same thing, "Well, that's different." You can see that being POT investigator wouldn't just be having great theme music, an on and off love life and a back-story that continues to surprise. Tell me again how it was that you were a nun in a convent and ended up killing three priests who were part of a sleeper cell from a militant atheist group. And how you got pregnant by one of them and now fear the time when your son finds out that you killed his farther.

Having no fear, the POT agents would delve even into the PO complaints that involve relatives. These may prove to be the most popular episodes of the program. It might take more than the wisdom of Solomon to make accurate PO determinations. Rather real or just over sensitive, you can be sure they will likely go on much further than the evidence shows to be reasonable. Perhaps through the course of the show, the POT detectives can find out why relatives are so offensive in the first place. If they weren't so offensive, there'd be fewer PO's. But some are going to be offended no matter what.

Another difficult part for our POT operatives will be those who can interpret most anything as a PO. It could be because they are overly critical or maybe addicted to a sense of moral or intellectual superiority and love the feeling of being outraged. Here, the team, who don't carry guns, may have to at least carry tasers to deal with situations where the PO has gone over the edge and caused an emotional explosion. This might be a bit much, but who hasn't wanted to taser someone who is ranting on about something that you did to them.

I'm sure as the show develops there will be plenty of stories to take from real life in order not to strain the writing staff. This would easily fit the always popular week-to-week infusion of special guest stars. Typecasting according to the particular PO would add an extra touch. After a while, the show could begin to show the wear and tear on the team, certainly one of them gets PTSD. Then there's the possibility later on that PO's start to gain even more legal merit. Each new possible crime would get the full treatment but with a twist that no one had thought about before.

All though the show, there's an ongoing discussion if not somewhat of a conflict as to what PO's are all about and ultimately what is the best way to deal with them. In the series final, the team finds a plaque in an old abandoned school cafeteria kitchen that reads, "Don't be offended by forgiveness." "Could it be that simple?" one of them asks. Another replies, "I think that's only when it truly was an offense to begin with." 

CREDITS: IZQUOTES.COM, LAW AND ORDER, SUE FITZMAURICE

THE UNEASY PACE OF CHANGE

Change on the prairie is remarkably slow at times. That's the way we like it. But change does come. Farming and ranching changes a little from year to year and progresses slowly toward an eventual new look, but without very much fanfare. Communities change with increase in population and school enrollment as others change with a decrease. But further, you can see the remnants from times past of once potential communities and hopeful homesteads that were left for different dreams. 

Every now and then, a faster symbol of change occurs. The most recent was the going out of business of a store that has long served rural communities. It could have been quicker except for that it came by some sort of scale of percentages off until the inventory was gone. Granted, they were likely cycling in all the merchandize from warehouses but the incremental drops in percentage off was more like water torture.

I live 45 miles from three towns of any size, Yuma, Wray and Burlington. Each had an ALCO store; the one in Wray moved into a new store location not that long ago.  The weekly sales flyer was always perused and kept until the next arrived, just in case. Downsized Wal*Marts would be a good description. The prices matched what you had in mind to spend. I have no idea of what happened to the company but with the now empty stores, I wondered if something else would come in. But so far, they're just sitting there, at least they were the last time I looked.

When my wife and I traveled though out Colorado and neighboring states, we found other ALCO stores and often stopped to get one thing or the other because that was the kind of stores they were. I suspect most of the ALCO's were in smaller rural towns. To me, the store closings just didn't seem right. They fit well. As long as you weren't looking for anything too exciting, you had a good chance of finding it there.            

The ALCO stores no doubt caused some local stores to close and drew business from the larger towns that people made special trips to in order to get what they needed. The new stores must have found enough customers and became profitable. They eventually were the new norm, that which was expected, and the way it always was.

Sometimes it's hard to say if a change will be for better or for worse or for staying the same. It likely depends on who's saying it. But no matter, other factors come along that eventually produce the next change, whether subtle or dramatic. 

Let me say, so there is no misunderstanding. I live here, but I don't have to make a living here. For the locals, that's a big difference. Many are religiously devoted to the local economy. But for several years now some people have gone more frequently to more distant and bigger towns to get better deals and choices, even as far as a two hour trip to Denver.

Of course, mail ordering now has a big impact. I'm sure the every time the UPS truck makes a delivery to our house, it will be another year before we'll be accepted into the prairie community. But both UPS and FED-EX deliver daily in this area, so I'm not the only one ordering from amazon. But we've also had SEARS and AMERICAN FURNITURE deliver. So it might be awhile before we ever get invited to a potluck or are recognized by anything more than the obligatory wave.

So, it makes sense that these, and perhaps several other factors, which are changes in themselves, came together to necessitate the closing of the ALCO stores. And now, they are just the remnants of a day not so long ago that serve to symbolize even more changes, but mostly in finding new places or ways to get what  we need. If indeed, that wasn't something that was happening all along, but we were just too busy to think that much about it. 

CREDITS: ALCO Stores, Miscellaneous Arts, Getty