The Cynical Career Counsellor Explains Your Future as

A Police Officer

Hey--you're the kid who won that "ride along" thing, aren't you? You must've really liked it. Okay, so you want to be a cop. Let me tell you about what you can expect.

First you'll have to decide if you want to be RCMP--which means you have to get a degree, be bilingual, and ready to move to the arctic on a moment's notice, or if you want to be a city cop, which means you get lower pay, less respect, and uglier uniforms.

I'm guessing you'll choose city cop--you don't want to live in Fly's Elbow, Saskatchewan--so you'll need to go to the justice institute--where you'll spend an inordinate amount of time learning how to shoot accurately and drive fast--things that will be an incredibly minor part of your day to day job... What they really should be spending time on is telling you how to find a good divorce lawyer, and what to do when you are falling asleep with boredom over the incredible volume of paperwork you have to complete every week--usually for things like traffic accidents and noise complaints.

Eventually you'll have the sort of action you crave, and the stress of watching a partner get wounded will haunt your nightmares for weeks. Your spouse will try to communicate with you, but you'll drift further and further apart, and your main solace will be the bottles of scotch you drain quicker and quicker, and begin to hide around the house.

When they're young, your kids will think you have the coolest job in the world, and you'll be the most popular visitor to the elementary classroom--whether it's for parent career day, where you let them see the lights and hear the siren, or if you're doing the bike safety course every spring. Unfortunately, by the time they're 14, you're an embarassment. Their friends don't want to come over to your house because they can't do things comfortably they do other places--to prove they're not "narcs", your kids go overboard proving their willingness to get into the drug/party scene, and you never get used to the embarassment of your coworkers bringing home your kids in a marked car.

You are divorced before they graduate, and they immediately bond with the new guy your wife quickly replaces you with. They grudgingly visit you at the prescribed times, and the interactions you have with them are awkward and uncomfortable. They hate the trashy cop fetishists that pursue you and you find easier to just hook up with rather than look for real relationships. You begin volunteering for overtime--working as much as you can to escape the hollowness of your life and the apathy of your children.

Eventually you make a mistake--you shoot an unarmed man in a domestic dispute. Media attention, public disgrace, and a temporary 'stress leave" end with you quietly taking early retirement--you spend your golden years as a shopping mall security guard--your kids send you a card every christmas...