I hope to continue this new tradition of just writing up about my weekly experiences/impressions on Friday night. This is my recess night. Everyone has gone to bed, and I don't have to get up early in the morning, so I smoke a pipe or two and catch up on reading some blogs and doing some blogging myself. This is why you should see more activity here during weekends.
An experience this week reminded me of another of my odd beliefs: a certain large cross-section of the human race will always require something to witch-hunt. That is, many people will always need something or someone to fear and/or persecute. Maybe eventually we will evolve out of it, but I don't see it happening in my lifetime, or many generations yet to come, for that matter.
Back in the days of yore, it was actually witches (or suspected witches, I should say). The Nazis had the Jews and eventually pretty much everyone else, the KKK have African Americans (and Jews), and recently some witch-hunting has been going on against perfectly innocent Arabic Americans. Which brings me to the point: the terrorism of the past few years has opened up the witch hunt to include anyone whose (note to Ms. Ficara) face you don't immediately recognize.
A few months ago one of my co-workers was actually detained by a property owner. We work for a company that is contracted to the local C.P.S. to provide extra meter readers, so we don't wear C.P.S. uniforms. We do have our own uniform, which includes a bright yellow shirt that can be seen from several blocks away--not exactly the kind of color you would wear to sneak into someone's backyard to commit some mischief. We also wear ID badges that include our photo along with the logos of both our company and C.P.S. Our meter reader was not allowed to leave the property until both our manager and the police were on the scene to assure the whacko that this guy was, indeed, only a meter reader. Why do I equate this with the witch hunt? Because of what the whacko said: "We got a war going on. How do I know who's in my backyard?" (Once more, note to Ms. Ficara). Now how does a war against terrorists have any relation to some poor guy standing in your yard, wearing a uniform, holding a handheld computer, and looking at your meter?
A similar, though less dramatic, event happened to me this week while running an OMR route. I had stopped to check the map and see which way I was supposed to turn at the end of the street, when I heard someone yell. He ran up to my truck on the passenger's side--the truck was already in drive and all I had to do was accelerate, and besides, lots of people have legitimate questions. The most popular questions, among people who don't realize their meter is automated, are "Do you need to get into my yard?" or "Did you get my house?" But this guy said, "You searching for RF?" (The handheld unit has a rubber ducky antenna to pick up the signals). I told him exactly who I was and what I was doing, and the entire time he kept looking all around the inside of my truck, trying to find something. "Okay, just checking," he said. "Lots of strange stuff been going on around here lately." I don't know what kind of nefarious activity he could be expecting from someone who was just driving down the street holding a radio out the window. I was dying to ask him what kind of stuff, but he had just a little too much of the whites of his eyes showing, if you get my drift. "Oookay," I replied, and went on my way. The guy seemed to be solidly in the paranoid freak category.
On a lighter note, we had our weekly "safety meeting" this Thursday. This one was on "proper conduct" or something like that. One of the rules was "no unauthorized firearms." My first question was, "How can we get an authorized firearm?" Well, the rule made it sound like this was possible. Only my immediate supervisor--a fellow gun nut--thought it was funny. Heck, most of time I'd be happy to just have some big ol' clunky .38 Special security guard revolver, except that it would be getting mighty heavy by the end of the day.
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