Joe surveyed his beat as he cinched up the scarf that his wife had made him around his neck. He smiled briefly, warmed by the idea that the very thought of her could still make him smile after all these years. The warmth faded quickly in the face of the incessant tone and tenor of his daily routine however. He had been informed that his position as head of campus security was soon going to be eliminated in an effort to trim the university’s budget.
When he had started this job 20 years ago he was straight out of the police academy, bright and willing to work hard. He had chosen this beat instead of one on the street at his wife’s request. She had begged him to stay away from real police duty because of deep fear that she would lose him. How could he refuse her? She had supported him all the way through the academy without fear or trepidation, but on that day when he was to begin interviewing with the city police department, she had dissolved into tears at the thought of him patrolling the streets that were getting more and more dangerous by the day.
“Please Joe, I cannot bear the thought of losing you. Please. Please. You can help people in other ways, just not this way. You can’t protect your community unless you protect yourself first. Please Joe, there has to be another way.”
He had never seen her like this. So utterly consumed with fear. He couldn’t refuse her. So he had cancelled all of his interviews in the various departments and reached out to friends at the academy for new options. He had gotten this job at the biggest university in the region quickly and had risen through the ranks of the security guard rapidly to his current position as “Captain of the Guard” as he jokingly called it.
When he had taken the job he had been excited to be continually surrounded by youth. To always be dually immersed in the naiveté that comes with college kids as well as the constant search for knowledge. He thought it would keep him young, keep him vibrant. Instead the daily grind wore down his brightness until it was just a toothless maw of routine.
He patrolled the rolling campus day after day making eye contact with the bullies to let them know someone was paying attention, avoiding eye contact with the slutty girls to avoid paying attention, keeping track of the timid ones to make sure they weren’t getting dealt blows off anyone else’s radar.
In the beginning he had treated it as a way to train himself in human nature. He studied the students with keen attention, picking apart their ticks and oddities as well as cataloging their sweetness and meanness. He didn’t keep track of faces, he kept track of behavior. He probably couldn’t pick out a handful of the thousands of students he had seen over the years, but he could write a book on their behavior. How they carried themselves, how they spoke to one another, how they showed off and how they tried so hard to disappear.
The scenery changed every day with the comings and goings of the student body. The seasons changed the landscape dramatically. Even his own ranks turned over as its members either drifted into something else or finally saved enough money to get into the police academy. Initially, maybe even for the first 10 years or so, the constant change had kept him sharp and allowed him to see some of what he had so studiously learned. But ultimately he grew accustomed to the change. Because even change gets monotonous after a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment