Smashed-up Demonic Crossword Puzzles
Nice to meet you, Professor Hawkins.
What I imagine you'd like to talk about is why I'm interested in this specific field. Well, if you'd like to have a really honest, in-depth answer to that, I'll have to explain a few things about my life.
Beyond my coursework and all the rest of the college life, I've spent the past seven years or so trying to figure people out. That's why I majored in psychology at Rice.
Well, Professor, this is really going to get personal. Because if you think about what the words mean, psychology is supposed to be the study of the soul, so I'll give you a bit of a glimpse of mine. Most people, if they were sitting across this table from me like you are now, Sir, what would they think based on what they see? A short-haired, clean-shaven twenty-two-year-old blond kid in a suit, polite and talkative, probably they'd imagine that I'm nice and harmless. Never in a thousand years would they imagine that I've actually killed a guy before I turned eighteen.
Before you start thinking I'm going off an all sorts of crazy irrelevant tangents, let me explain. The guy was a rapist. He'd sexually assaulted a girl who went to my high school. She wasn't my girlfriend then, although out of everything that happened, she was after that for a while. We were supposed to meet for a tutoring session one evening, except I was late because my car wasn't starting, and this random guy in the sandwich shop tried to attack her and tear her clothes off and pull her into his truck, but she managed to get away just when I showed up. No, I didn't attack him then, he drove away.
Several months later, we'd been studying together and we went to the store to buy some food, and he'd been following her. I went in to get a few things while my friend – Tyra, that's her name – waited outside, and he assaulted her a second time. When I came out and saw them struggling there, I jumped on him and tried to pull him away from her, and he knocked me down. And then he threatened Tyra, saying he'd be back. There was this concrete pipe section lying there, and I grabbed it and hit the guy on the head with it. That killed him, and Tyra and I, we actually stuffed him in the trunk of my car and threw his body off a bridge that night.
I know, this is definitely not your typical graduate school interview. But please let me tie this in together. Ever since that time, I've been wondering how and why it all happened. Not my part – that was obvious. He threatened my friend, might have raped or killed her, and possibly killed me, so I acted out of defensive, protective instinct. This isn't some sort of unsolved mystery crime; I went to the police later to confess and was cleared of all charges due to self-defense. That hasn't stopped me from still thinking about the whole episode, of course.
This rapist – I actually met with his brother later, because once his body surfaced, since he'd also been identified for other rapes, the brother wanted to make amends somehow with the victims, but Tyra did not want to meet with him, no way at all, and I went instead. And the whole thing was puzzling to me – how did this guy get it into his head that he could force himself on young girls like that, that there wasn't something completely wrong about it? Tyra, she was seventeen years old back then. His brother made him sound like he was some kind of great guy who was nice to him and his wife and kids – how could all that coexist?
Now I think you're starting to understand. I'm from a small town originally, and Dillon, Texas might not sound like the ideal environment for observing people and figuring them out. Let me give you one more example, though. In my senior year, I was on the school football team, and one of my teammates had been allowed onto the team as a way to reform himself, so he didn't go to juvenile camp. I didn't know it, but his father was in jail at the time. Basically, if he played on the football team and kept up a clean record in school, he'd be all right. And in the first couple of weeks, he stole another player's wallet. If our coach had reported it at the time, he would have been back in juvie, probably on pace for a life of crime. What'd he been thinking? He knew he was on his last chance. The ironic thing is that he turned out to be a decent guy, to become a leader and an example; in fact, he's playing college football now and has a good chance to go into the NFL. How did he manage that? He lived just one mile away from my house. If I'd been born living just one mile further southeast, maybe I would have ended up in his situation – or if my father had been like his, instead of being a police detective. Are we really a product of our environment right down to that level of detail, or what's going on?
What happened to Tyra? As far as I know, she's all right. I haven't actually seen her since she started studying in Austin. We were supposed to meet once but she never showed up. But that's neither here nor there. (Of course I wondered why that happened, in fact I still do, but that's none of your business, Professor.)
In my mind, I used to compare my hometown to some sort of smashed-up demonic crossword puzzle, where the clues and the answers and the letters already on there were mixed up in some colossally extreme way. Just trying to figure out motivations, actions, why people did things – and why some people would do some things and not others – that's what I've spent these years doing, trying to make some sense out of all that mystery. And if I can do that in a way that's a benefit to society, that makes some part of the world into a safer place, that helps figure out how to stop more crimes from being committed, that's an ideal goal for me. I've read about how the city government in New York managed to bring the crime rate down by focusing on things like graffiti, fare jumpers, and the windshield washers. Yes, the Broken Windows theory. I don't necessarily see myself going into the police force, or profiling for law enforcement – while I feel I definitely could do that, I suspect I'd be more interested in how to use psychological knowledge to develop anti-crime policies. Possibly for abuse prevention as well.
Right, we don't have much time left, but I hope, with what I've said today, that I've given you a clearer picture of why it is that I applied for the graduate program in Criminology at the University of Chicago. Thank you, I'll look forward to hearing from you.
(And then there's the part that I didn't tell him. That sometimes this voice in my mind tells me that maybe the crossword puzzle is supposed to stay smashed up, the clues are wrong, and there aren't any real answers. Landry, maybe it's not a good idea to try to figure out people and society because they're not really supposed to make sense.
I hope Matt and Julie finally bought some decent coffee. At least they're always fun to talk with.)