“You better be fully grown before you pin a badge on your chest. Nobody’s gonna hold your hand out there, boy.”
The narrator joins the police department as a cadet when he is nineteen years old. He is among the youngest serving police cadets because the fellow cops are much older than he is. He is working closely with Rogerson who is working as a desk officer. Rodgers is older and this is evident from his grey hair. He has been working in this department for over twenty-five years after leaving the military. He looks at the narrator with skepticism because he thinks that he is too young to serve as a police cadet. Jonny calls the narrator 'kid' and wonders who authorizes young babies to work with senior men. Jonny tells the narrator; he better grows fully before pinning a badge on his chest and there is nobody who is going to hold his hand. Consequently, Kenny is telling the narrator to work hard and be determined.
“So what do you want to be when you grow up, boy?”
The narrator is on an internship as a cadet officer working alongside Jonny as a desk officer assistant. Jonny is an experienced officer and he loves making jokes a lot but the narrator is getting used to him. However, Jonny thinks that it will take years for the narrator to succeed in police and he wonders if he is thinking of doing a different job in the future other than being a police officer. When he asks the narrator what he wants to be when he grows up, the narrator answers that he has always wanted to be a cop and that is what he is pursuing.
“Got some career advice for this kid? Seems he is got his heart set on being one of us.”
Throughout the story, the reader realizes that being a cop is a calling but not an attractive job that can make someone earn good money. When Jonny looks at the narrator, he wonders why a bright and energetic young man would wish to waste all his fruitful years serving as a cop instead of considering other options. He asks his fellow cops to offer career advice to the narrator. The other cops laugh at the narrator because they think that he is making the wrong choice of being a cop. One of the cops says working as a policeman sacks and he thinks that the narrator should consider being a banker or something else that can earn him good money.
