I was standing there, conversing with my coworker and doing kitchen-y things, and a security guard and a guy with a military lanyard came in. “Excuse me,” they said. They popped a round metal disc about the size of a watch battery off a contact sheet and stuck it inside a cabinet door. “Thank you,” they said, and left.
Um…
Also, this morning, I hopped on my usual train, and the operator’s voice crackled over the loudspeaker as usual. I’m used to hearing the line, the next station, occasionally a “good morning” and a few interesting facts, if it’s a chipper operator. This time he said, “HERE WE GO.” I was like, “Okay, this is a fun guy.” But “Here we go” didn’t mean “here we, the train, go on a super-fast, super-secret underground roller-coaster.” It meant, “Here I, the guy with the loudspeaker, go on an anti-Romney rant that will make your ears bleed regardless of your political stance.”
To be fair, I was wrong about the voice belonging to the train operator, which is nice, because I would have had to call that in. You can’t call in crazy fellow passengers with bullhorns and groupies who hold signs and chant until getting off at the next station.
Well. I guess you can. But I didn’t feel the same kind of obligation to do so.
My point with all of this is that my relationship with authority is a very strange one today. If a cop pulls me over tonight and gives me an ice cream cone, I’ll consider the day complete.