Stomach Flu and a Beating, Too

After a restless night of making sure my daughter's throw-up landed in the bedside bucket, I awoke early to the sounds of my wife also purging and dry-heaving. By 0400, I too, began to feel the onset of the stomach flu. I contemplated 'calling in sick' several times but knew I would be missing an important day at the academy.

I decided to tough it out and see how far I could make it on 'Red Man Day.' I left my house at 0500 with an impending sense of doom. This is the day our defensive tactics instructors suit up in red pads and fight the recruits two on one (that's two instructors and one recruit). The fight was only a minute long but felt like an eternity due to my diminished lung capacity complete exhaustion. I think I managed to hit them with a few good strikes but these were nothing compared to the barrage of punches I absorbed. I wasn't knocked down but was overcome by the relentless pounding.

After this near-death experience, I had to run out of the room into the desert and release what little contents I had in my stomach.

I thought the day was over but then learned that we would be practicing a domestic violence scenario acted out by the same instructors. The scene was two brothers fighting one another. As my partner and I tried to apprehend one brother, the other attacked and the fight was on again. We were both knocked to the ground and I was quickly struggling for my gun as the bad guy and I wrestled. After several minutes of ground fighting, we were finally able to arrest both brothers.

My long day has now ended and I am hoping to get to bed early. Tomorrow is the first day of field problems where we are graded on different scenarios ranging from administering DUI tests, to civil disputes, to felony crimes in progress.