Q: Is throwing an object by a minor at another minor and hitting them considered assault?

A: Throwing the object is assault. As soon as it hits someone, you've entered the magical land of battery. Put them together and you have assault and battery, two great crimes that go great together, like breaking and entering, false imprisonment and kidnapping, and my personal favorite, loitering and mopery.

You're probably too young to remember, but back in '86 we had a rash of loiter/moperies back.  The foot shacks on Bowery sat dormant, the tourists dried up, the myopic were too scared to leave the house. We were a city under siege,  until some hot shot detective figured out the pattern, posed as a blind street flutist and put down roots on 3rd and 3rd, waiting for that sick bastard to show himself. The cop waited for sixteen days, and on the seventeenth, just as he was about to quit, who should come walking up to him but a cheesy vacuum salesman, whistling some made up tune and holding a handful of his dirty junk.

The detective, having found his loitering moperer, took off his sunglasses to reveal he was not blind, took out his badge and his service revolver to reveal that he was a cop, and revealed that the gun was loaded by emptying its contents -  bullets - into the stomach, head, neck and groin of the vacuum salesman.

Time stood still in the park that day, all you could here was the sound of justice, followed by the sound of screams - the moping son of a bitch was still hanging on - followed by more justice in the form of bullets, followed by the tepid applause of innocent citizens saved from a diabolical rampage that many did not know existed.

The word "hero," gets used a lot these days, but on that day, no one said it. No one even thought it,  despite the officer's pleas, not even when he passed out the commemorative t-shirts featuring a cartoon rendering of the detective standing in the 'O' of the word hero.

You might be shocked to hear that I am that police officer. I'll pause now to allow you to take in this new information and compose yourselves.

Take your time. There's no need to feign apathy. It's only natural to feel shocked and begin to doubt the very nature of your existence. If you feel the need to hyperventilate, no one will judge you.

Okay, it looks like, due to the reality-shattering nature of my admission, it may take some time for the shock to kick in. I'll just keep going and hopefully be able to finish before you succumb to the shock.

For the past few months you have all known me as Dennis, the new kid, the one with the mismatched socks, and the divorced parents, and the love of Strat-O-Matic Baseball.  I'm sure you all thought the same thing, "Sure, Dennis might smells a little and run funny and spend too much time talking to that Racquel Welch poster in his locker, but he's basically just like us, a 13-year old kid trying to figure out his way in this crazy world."

You all thought wrong. I'm nothing like you. I've been  undercover this whole time. And I know all your secrets.

You might have thought that by throwing a rock at fellow minor you'd be safe from criminal prosecution, but again you'd be wrong. You didn't throw that rock at any kid, you threw it at a cop. And not just any cop, a highly decorated 51 year old cop only three years from a pension and assigned to our new Jump Street division due to budget cutbacks. You picked the wrong day to pick on Dennis.

Dennis isn't my real name by the way. It's Detective Peter Milligan.

Anyone feeling any shock yet?

Q: How can you use corpse in a sentence?

A: I just did:

Your partner is a corpse.

That's what I said a minute ago. Then you smiled and nodded and I thought you understood and you'd stop crying and stop kissing her and I wouldn't have to back away slowly and run.

But then you got this blank look on your face, this far away look like you could see right through me, through everything, that look made me want to back away slowly and run and run until my legs gave out, but I didn't because I knew you'd catch me, and you asked what corpse means and I smiled because I thought you were joking and I pointed to your partner, dead on the ground.

But you didn't smile or laugh or seem to understand what I was saying, and then you asked again what corpse means and I said "a dead body" and you asked me to use in a sentence and I said "Your partner is a corpse" and now you asked again and I'm kind of at a loss for words.

Your partner is dead. She is a corpse. She is that corpse. That's why she's not happy to see you. That's why she can't hug you back. Stop trying to force her arms. Rigor mortis makes them too stiff.

I'm guessing you haven't been a detective that long. And I'm guessing you and your partner had a relationship that was more than professional. That probably makes her death hard to accept. If it were up to me, you could stay there holding her and crying all day. But it's not up to me. We have a crime scene to process. I need you to step away from the corpse so I can take her down to the morgue for an autopsy.

You probably don't want me to explain what autopsy means.

Q: How does a homicide Detective determine a drowning?

A: First, we make sure the guy is dead. You don't make that mistake more than twice - not if you want to stay a Homicide Detective and not get busted back down to Traffic or Bunco.

Once we make sure the guy is dead - again, I can't stress how important this part is. You have to be sure. Hold a mirror under his nose. Listen to his heart. If no one's looking, kick him a few times. If he fogs up the mirror, or snores, or his heart beats, or he screams "Quit kicking me!" then he is not dead, and you don't have a homicide and you can go home and catch up on the DVR - once we make sure the guy is dead - and your husband is dead, trust me, I gave him a solid kick in the ribs, even poked him a few times in the eye with the pool skimmer; he didn't budge - once we're positive the corpse is, in fact, a corpse, we drag him out of the pool, his presence in the pool being a sign that he probably drowned, haul him down to the lab and have our forensics experts run some tests.

Now, I know what you're thinking - Sure he might have drowned, but how do you know he was murdered? Here's where the art of detection comes in. We drain his lungs to see if there's been foul play. That's where things get interesting.

You see, you have a saltwater pool, which is pretty rare for this area, and has to be expensive, but I guess beats having that smell of chlorine all over you after a late night dip. If you husband drowned in this pool, we would have found saltwater in his lungs. You know what we found? Gravy. Three gallons of country gravy.

We're confident he was murdered - drowned by gravy, we see it all the time - then pushed into the pool to cover up the crime. The question remains: Who would kill a man with gravy?

Now, Ma'am I appreciate how accommodating you've been to me and all the other officers, letting us in your home, bringing us drinks, rubbing our shoulders, covering us with blankets during our cat naps, judging our diving competitions, cooking us meal after meal, day after day, each one more delicious than the last, each one covered with heaping, steamy piles of thick, white country gravy. You have a lot of gravy around the house. More than I've ever seen, and in so many odd places, like on the floor of your bedroom and in that caulking gun.

Ma'am I hate to ask you this, because I've grown rather fond of your company, and your cooking, but is there anything you would like to tell me?

Anything at all?

Anything about the death of your husband?

No? Nothing? Not a thing?

Whew. Glad I got that off my chest. That's been bugging me for weeks.

Can I have some more biscuits, please?

Don't be stingy with the gravy, either.

Q: Do Beta Bites get too old to feed to your beta?

A: Real Beta Bites are loaded with chemicals. They last forever.

Now, I'm not a detective (legally) but I have noticed a few clues that make me suspect that your so-called "Beta Bites" are not, in fact, real Beta Bites

Clue Number One: The bottle. Real Beta Bites come in a factory-sealed, and more importantly, factory-made bottle, with a factory-made label. Your "Beta Bites" come in an old Advil bottle with the words "Bayta" and Bitez"  scrawled on the side in crayon.

Clue Number Two: The food. Real Beta Bites contain tiny flakes of fish food. Your "Beta Bites" contain large chunks of flesh, flesh that looks suspiciously like thumbs, suspiciously like the thumbs of your missing neighbor.

Clue Number Three: The fish. When Fighting Fish eat Beta Bites, they grow and thrive and live a long time. Your Fighting Fish died. I can only assume - again, not a detective (legally) - that they choked to death on chunks of thumb.

Clue Number Four: The water. Real Beta Bites cloud the water. The water in your aquarium is so clear, I can see everything  - from the sunken castle to the coral to the severed head of your missing neighbor resting on the bottom of the tank.

Clue Number Five: The gun in your hand. You have to ask yourself, "Would a man in possession of real Beta Bites need to pull a gun on a pet store owner/ amateur detective to prove the validity of said Beta Bites?" Probably not.

Clue Number Six: The bullet lodged in my spleen. I hate to jump to conclusions, but pulling the trigger and shooting me does make you seem like you have something to hide.

Clue Number Seven: When you shot me, you said "Those Beta Bites aren't real, sucker!" Pretty damning.

Clue Number Eight: I need to sit down.

Clue Number Ni...