Choke [Part One]
Today is Tuesday. Boring-average-predictable Tuesday. It's slow as usual at Norlin, the campus library where I work as a security guard. Yes, I know. Working security must involve manhandling violators and wielding a sidearm. I wish. It would certainly make things more interesting in this hundred-year-old relic. No, I wear a worn-out black polo with an embroidered eight-star "badge" over the chest and screen-printed gray lettering that stretches across the back between my shoulder blades. I wield a black Kenwood five-channel radio -- clipped to my belt when I'm doing rounds or rotating gates. No, it's never exciting. It's usually abnormally dull. You'll go insane if you don't have a book or laptop available to pass the time. Ten hours on a Saturday will be the longest day of your life if you didn't bring an essay to write or a novel to read cover to cover. It's Christmas break still, so there aren't many visitors to the library. It can get real quiet around here, so we stream music from Pandora or watch movies on Hulu to keep ourselves entertained. If I'm feeling more focused, I'll bring a book.
I sit at the east entrance to monitor the traffic flow and check people's bags when the alarm for library books goes off. There are about fifty different guards that work Norlin security, so I often work with people I haven't met before, mostly when I work a different day than normal.
Today is Tuesday. Boring-average-predictable Tuesday. So I switch gates with a guy I met once before when I worked some random weekday. Probably a Tuesday. Just to keep things from being somewhat awkward, he asks me what I did for New-Year's. I told him I slept through it because I was tired. I asked him what he did for New-Year's eve. He said he meditated through it.
"I'm in a yoga class that I've been part of for four years, and we meditate and drink tea on New-Year's Eve."
I said that sounds pretty chill as I unpack my bag.
See you in an hour, I say. I'll switch from the east to the west gate in an hour. I checked out a laptop to keep myself busy, and I'll switch to reading a book in a few minutes. Some lady comes in with a guy who must be her kid. She's a short, very heavy-set woman who has to breathe a lot in between sentences. Do you know where Desiree is, she asks.
She works here apparently.
Tell her it's her mother and I need to tell her that her Grandpa died. Um, I say, do you know what department she works in, 'cause tons of people work in this library. Inter-library loan, she says. That's where she works.
Okay. I radio the security office. "Eighty-five-hundred east to eighty-five-hundred base". I ask if they know of a lady named Desiree Ramirez who works here. Inter-library loan office, I say. But I remember that that office is just right around the corner, so I point her in the right direction and tell her to ask the people at the circulation desk. They should be able to help her.
I'm reading a Chuck Palahnuik novel, and I just have a few pages left. About five or ten minutes later the girl comes out, her eyes red and puffy from crying. Her face is wet from the tears and she's still breathing erratically. Those short, in-out breaths that don't let you get enough air. The lady has her arm around the girl's shoulder as they walk towards the exit. I try to wave at the guy, but he ignores me and I realize that it wasn't the most aptly timed wave. The east-entrance lobby gets quiet again and I go back to reading my paperback book.
It's five minutes before twelve o'clock. Dan comes to take over monitoring the east gate entrance. Dan's a tall, muscular frat boy who has a subtle lisp or something. He's been here for a couple or three years. He gets paid eight bucks an hour and has his own call number now. Before I got to the east gate for my shift, Greg was moving a large metal desk that had been set up by the gate for us to use. We had to move it since the metal kept setting off the alarms. Now we have our tiny little rickety wooden desk again. The metal desk, Dan says, was twenty-seven-hundred dollars. I thought he was joking.
No, he says. Campus buys office supplies and stuff from a correctional facility, so they have to pay really high prices for some reason, which is weird since they pay the inmates like eight cents an hour. I say that's crazy. Yeah, he says. Sarge's office chair was four hundred dollars. One of those nicer, curvy-backed chairs that you could get for a hundred bucks at Staples. Sarge is our boss. He's an older, one-armed Native American guy with long, wispy, black and gray hair who likes to make off-color jokes and play Queen and Journey on his computer sound system.
Yeah, that desk over there - he points to a long glass desk with flat black framing in the lobby - that desk was ten thousand dollars. Holy cow, I say. That's crazy. No wonder our tuition is so expensive.
Yeah.
See you in a bit, I say.
I head over to the west gate.
The Norlin Library is a huge, ancient building that was built in 1922 or something like that. It's old. The whole building has a weird stale smell that fills every corner. New wings have been added on to the building about twenty times at least, creating a strange mix between historic and modern. The library is a huge, maze-like building. It's way too easy to get lost, even if you've been working here for a while.
An hour goes by at the west gate. I've already switched to another book. Dan arrives on time, as usual. I walk to the security office.
I mess around on my laptop for a while, then Sarge or someone says something about some guy, probably a homeless guy, who wasn't supposed to be on campus. He must have been banned or something. Sarge is on the phone with campus security, and he's talking about this guy -- he has his report pulled up on his computer -- who isn't supposed to be on campus. A few minutes later a kind of scraggly old guy with an off-green beanie and long gray hair and a beard shows up at the door. He starts talking to me as Sarge is on the phone and other people are talking, so I can't really hear him. I think he said something about not really being in violation of whatever he was in violation of. That he didn't really do anything that warranted him being banned from the area. I was just trying to be polite or whatever by listening and nodding my head from time to time. I just kept telling him that my boss was working it out and they'll talk to him in a sec. The police show up and they start talking to the homeless guy. Homeless guy keeps talking over the cops, insisting that he didn't do anything. He just went in to another campus building to get a cup of noodles. He didn't do anything wrong. The police are still talking to him. There are two of them. They have short, trimmed haircuts kept in place by hair gel and are clean-shaven. One of them keeps his hand on his belt while he talking to homeless guy. Homeless guy keeps talking over the cops and he starts to irritate them. The cop with the hand on his belt tells him to let him talk or homeless guy will end up in jail again. The homeless guy finally calms down a little bit, and the cops just give him a warning and let him go. The cops chat with Sarge a bit, and then they tell us to contact them if homeless guy gives us any more trouble.
I'm probably reading again or fiddling around with my computer by this time. Greg comes up to the door. He says he needs some help moving some shelving around. Sarge says I could help. I close my laptop and follow Greg out to the west-gate lobby -- the one with nasty orange carpeting.
Greg talks in sort of a cooing manner, like he's always talking to a five-year old or a baby or something. He has a soft and unoffensive tone when he speaks, often speaking with rising intonation in his sentences. Greg. Waiting-to-get-into-law-school Greg. He shows me all of the shelving and gray filing cabinets that need to be moved. There are two large piles of dismantled tan metal shelving in the orange-carpeted lobby, along with at least thirty five-and-a-half-foot-high filing cabinets full of reference cards for microfilm newspaper articles.
I've worked with Greg once or twice before. We moved a bunch of old, twelve-foot-long solid wood tables around the library a couple of times. Greg said he graduated a year or two ago with a degree in history. He said he should have taken it more seriously. He talked about how he had to wait to get into law school for this coming school year. He said he didn't know when the school is going to get back to him about whether he's accepted or not. Just waiting, he said.
He says that we need to find some carts to use so we can move the shelving down to the first floor. We go down to the offices behind the circulation desk and Greg talks to a short little old man with thick, horn-rimmed glasses and a blue, sweater-vest type windbreaker, which he's wearing over a green polo. They chat for a while and Greg is able to procure a small cart that is normally used for transporting books around the library. We walk over to the west elevator and he realizes that we need one more cart. I wait by the elevator while he runs over to another office nearby to borrow another cart. A short lady with black hair brushes by me as I'm waiting near the elevator and rides to an upper floor. Greg comes back with a little black cart and we ride the elevator to the second floor to begin loading shelves. By this time, it's almost time for me to take over the next shift at the east gate, so we drop off our loads on the first floor and I head over to the office to get my stuff to start the next shift. By this time a girl -- her name starts with an "S", I'm pretty sure -- was already headed over to east, so I just wait in the office for my shift to end.
About a half-hour into the one-hour shift, a middle-aged man with a black beanie and a lot of moles on his face comes up to the door and starts talking to me. I walk over and listen to what he's saying. He says his name is David, David Hepburn, and he starts talking about this guy named John Johanson who attacks people in broad daylight and needs to be banned from campus immediately. David said John gave him a bruise, pointing to a small purple bruise underneath his left eye. I grab a notepad and start writing.
Yeah, David said. John is a really violent guy. I called the chairman and talked to him about it. Campus security is worthless.
I think he used an explicative in there somewhere.
You need to get rid of this guy, David says. I was almost banned myself for just reporting it.
He asks me where my boss is. I tell him that Sarge was out for a minute, but I'll let him know once he gets back. I scribble a few more notes about John's appearance and repeat that I'll tell my boss about it. David nods and heads out the west gate.
About ten minutes later or so, Sarge comes back to the office. I explain the situation that the guy described, and Sarge asks what the guys' names were. David Hepburn and John Johanson, I say. Sarge chuckles and tells me they're just two homeless lovers who try to get each other banned from campus. I think he described it as a love-hate relationship, but more cleverly worded. Sarge tells me that he's heard of murders committed by homeless people. They kill each other, I guess. He says it like it's not an uncommon thing.
Oh, I say.
Not too much later, a short, round-bellied old professor stands at the door, smiling with a gap between his two front teeth.He's wearing a navy sweater. He and Sarge chat for a bit and the professor makes a joke. Something about it being the new year. He locked himself out of his own office, he says.
Sarge hands me a mess of about fifteen keys connected to a dark blue lanyard and separates one key from the rest. It's this one, I'm pretty sure, he says. I follow the short professor down the hall and through part of the architecture stacks to his office located on the north side of the building. I try the key Sarge pointed out, but it didn't work. I try two more, but with no luck. I guess and just grab a random key and it unlocks the door. The professor tells me thanks. I tell him to have a good day and I walk back to S205, the security office.
A few more minutes pass and a short, thin Asian girl with thick oval glasses and a bright blue knit sweater asks me with a thick accent where she can check out a book. At least that's what I thought she was asking. It was difficult to understand her. I give her directions to the circulation desk.
Today is Tuesday. But it's not boring. Today was interesting. Not just because of the events or whatever that occurred -- they weren't really anything super exciting -- but because of the way these events made me think. Short, heavy-set lady with the crying daughter had something tragic happen to them. They lost their grandpa. The lady lost her dad -- her father. Meditation security guy made me think too. About priorities. Same thing with Dan. Spending ten grand on a glass desk that could be bought for a quarter of the price anywhere else made me wonder. Same with the two homeless guys that came to the office. And Greg, too. These were all different people. They each have their own lives, their own ideas about mortality. About life and death and politics. They have their greatest moments and dark moments too. We all have our own priorities.
I found God in each of these events. Specifically what, I can't really describe.
I remember reading a 'bucket list' of sorts for the year 2010 earlier today. Things like learn how to cook an amazing meal or get out of debt or run a marathon. But one thing on the list was to start a relationship that is not about you. Start a relationship that inconveniences you. One that costs you time. Or money even. One that's not about the possibility of romance or personal gains. One that is about the other person, not you.
I'm selfish, I know. But I wonder how each one of these person's lives would be different if they had a person who was friends with them not because of their own personal interests. If someone paid attention to them. Short, heavy-set lady and her crying daughter would feel more loved and less afraid. Maybe. Homeless guy may have someone to talk to and share his life with. Same with David Hepburn and Greg. Greg just works at the library all of the time, waiting to start his dream as a law student. I wonder what he does in his free time. Waiting-to-get-into-law-school Greg. Would they change? Any of them? If you inconvenienced yourself for them? I think meditative security guy had the right idea. What if I spent time with my Father on New Year's instead of...sleeping?
Priorities decide who we are because they decide what we do. Selfish priorities produce a selfish being.
The first book I was reading was about an addict who would pretend to choke on bits of food while he ate at classy restaurants in order to feel loved. He would potentially risk his life in order to feel like he mattered to the world. I wonder if Greg or homeless guy would ever do that. Risk their lives to feel like someone cared. Would homeless people stop trying to kill each other or have each other arrested if they felt loved?
Tuesday. Meditative-sorrowful-violated-scared-angry-excessive-selfish-impatient-unloved-Tuesday.
I sit at the east entrance to monitor the traffic flow and check people's bags when the alarm for library books goes off. There are about fifty different guards that work Norlin security, so I often work with people I haven't met before, mostly when I work a different day than normal.
Today is Tuesday. Boring-average-predictable Tuesday. So I switch gates with a guy I met once before when I worked some random weekday. Probably a Tuesday. Just to keep things from being somewhat awkward, he asks me what I did for New-Year's. I told him I slept through it because I was tired. I asked him what he did for New-Year's eve. He said he meditated through it.
"I'm in a yoga class that I've been part of for four years, and we meditate and drink tea on New-Year's Eve."
I said that sounds pretty chill as I unpack my bag.
See you in an hour, I say. I'll switch from the east to the west gate in an hour. I checked out a laptop to keep myself busy, and I'll switch to reading a book in a few minutes. Some lady comes in with a guy who must be her kid. She's a short, very heavy-set woman who has to breathe a lot in between sentences. Do you know where Desiree is, she asks.
She works here apparently.
Tell her it's her mother and I need to tell her that her Grandpa died. Um, I say, do you know what department she works in, 'cause tons of people work in this library. Inter-library loan, she says. That's where she works.
Okay. I radio the security office. "Eighty-five-hundred east to eighty-five-hundred base". I ask if they know of a lady named Desiree Ramirez who works here. Inter-library loan office, I say. But I remember that that office is just right around the corner, so I point her in the right direction and tell her to ask the people at the circulation desk. They should be able to help her.
I'm reading a Chuck Palahnuik novel, and I just have a few pages left. About five or ten minutes later the girl comes out, her eyes red and puffy from crying. Her face is wet from the tears and she's still breathing erratically. Those short, in-out breaths that don't let you get enough air. The lady has her arm around the girl's shoulder as they walk towards the exit. I try to wave at the guy, but he ignores me and I realize that it wasn't the most aptly timed wave. The east-entrance lobby gets quiet again and I go back to reading my paperback book.
It's five minutes before twelve o'clock. Dan comes to take over monitoring the east gate entrance. Dan's a tall, muscular frat boy who has a subtle lisp or something. He's been here for a couple or three years. He gets paid eight bucks an hour and has his own call number now. Before I got to the east gate for my shift, Greg was moving a large metal desk that had been set up by the gate for us to use. We had to move it since the metal kept setting off the alarms. Now we have our tiny little rickety wooden desk again. The metal desk, Dan says, was twenty-seven-hundred dollars. I thought he was joking.
No, he says. Campus buys office supplies and stuff from a correctional facility, so they have to pay really high prices for some reason, which is weird since they pay the inmates like eight cents an hour. I say that's crazy. Yeah, he says. Sarge's office chair was four hundred dollars. One of those nicer, curvy-backed chairs that you could get for a hundred bucks at Staples. Sarge is our boss. He's an older, one-armed Native American guy with long, wispy, black and gray hair who likes to make off-color jokes and play Queen and Journey on his computer sound system.
Yeah, that desk over there - he points to a long glass desk with flat black framing in the lobby - that desk was ten thousand dollars. Holy cow, I say. That's crazy. No wonder our tuition is so expensive.
Yeah.
See you in a bit, I say.
I head over to the west gate.
The Norlin Library is a huge, ancient building that was built in 1922 or something like that. It's old. The whole building has a weird stale smell that fills every corner. New wings have been added on to the building about twenty times at least, creating a strange mix between historic and modern. The library is a huge, maze-like building. It's way too easy to get lost, even if you've been working here for a while.
An hour goes by at the west gate. I've already switched to another book. Dan arrives on time, as usual. I walk to the security office.
I mess around on my laptop for a while, then Sarge or someone says something about some guy, probably a homeless guy, who wasn't supposed to be on campus. He must have been banned or something. Sarge is on the phone with campus security, and he's talking about this guy -- he has his report pulled up on his computer -- who isn't supposed to be on campus. A few minutes later a kind of scraggly old guy with an off-green beanie and long gray hair and a beard shows up at the door. He starts talking to me as Sarge is on the phone and other people are talking, so I can't really hear him. I think he said something about not really being in violation of whatever he was in violation of. That he didn't really do anything that warranted him being banned from the area. I was just trying to be polite or whatever by listening and nodding my head from time to time. I just kept telling him that my boss was working it out and they'll talk to him in a sec. The police show up and they start talking to the homeless guy. Homeless guy keeps talking over the cops, insisting that he didn't do anything. He just went in to another campus building to get a cup of noodles. He didn't do anything wrong. The police are still talking to him. There are two of them. They have short, trimmed haircuts kept in place by hair gel and are clean-shaven. One of them keeps his hand on his belt while he talking to homeless guy. Homeless guy keeps talking over the cops and he starts to irritate them. The cop with the hand on his belt tells him to let him talk or homeless guy will end up in jail again. The homeless guy finally calms down a little bit, and the cops just give him a warning and let him go. The cops chat with Sarge a bit, and then they tell us to contact them if homeless guy gives us any more trouble.
I'm probably reading again or fiddling around with my computer by this time. Greg comes up to the door. He says he needs some help moving some shelving around. Sarge says I could help. I close my laptop and follow Greg out to the west-gate lobby -- the one with nasty orange carpeting.
Greg talks in sort of a cooing manner, like he's always talking to a five-year old or a baby or something. He has a soft and unoffensive tone when he speaks, often speaking with rising intonation in his sentences. Greg. Waiting-to-get-into-law-school Greg. He shows me all of the shelving and gray filing cabinets that need to be moved. There are two large piles of dismantled tan metal shelving in the orange-carpeted lobby, along with at least thirty five-and-a-half-foot-high filing cabinets full of reference cards for microfilm newspaper articles.
I've worked with Greg once or twice before. We moved a bunch of old, twelve-foot-long solid wood tables around the library a couple of times. Greg said he graduated a year or two ago with a degree in history. He said he should have taken it more seriously. He talked about how he had to wait to get into law school for this coming school year. He said he didn't know when the school is going to get back to him about whether he's accepted or not. Just waiting, he said.
About a half-hour into the one-hour shift, a middle-aged man with a black beanie and a lot of moles on his face comes up to the door and starts talking to me. I walk over and listen to what he's saying. He says his name is David, David Hepburn, and he starts talking about this guy named John Johanson who attacks people in broad daylight and needs to be banned from campus immediately. David said John gave him a bruise, pointing to a small purple bruise underneath his left eye. I grab a notepad and start writing.
Yeah, David said. John is a really violent guy. I called the chairman and talked to him about it. Campus security is worthless.
I think he used an explicative in there somewhere.
You need to get rid of this guy, David says. I was almost banned myself for just reporting it.
He asks me where my boss is. I tell him that Sarge was out for a minute, but I'll let him know once he gets back. I scribble a few more notes about John's appearance and repeat that I'll tell my boss about it. David nods and heads out the west gate.
About ten minutes later or so, Sarge comes back to the office. I explain the situation that the guy described, and Sarge asks what the guys' names were. David Hepburn and John Johanson, I say. Sarge chuckles and tells me they're just two homeless lovers who try to get each other banned from campus. I think he described it as a love-hate relationship, but more cleverly worded. Sarge tells me that he's heard of murders committed by homeless people. They kill each other, I guess. He says it like it's not an uncommon thing.
Oh, I say.
Not too much later, a short, round-bellied old professor stands at the door, smiling with a gap between his two front teeth.He's wearing a navy sweater. He and Sarge chat for a bit and the professor makes a joke. Something about it being the new year. He locked himself out of his own office, he says.
Sarge hands me a mess of about fifteen keys connected to a dark blue lanyard and separates one key from the rest. It's this one, I'm pretty sure, he says. I follow the short professor down the hall and through part of the architecture stacks to his office located on the north side of the building. I try the key Sarge pointed out, but it didn't work. I try two more, but with no luck. I guess and just grab a random key and it unlocks the door. The professor tells me thanks. I tell him to have a good day and I walk back to S205, the security office.
A few more minutes pass and a short, thin Asian girl with thick oval glasses and a bright blue knit sweater asks me with a thick accent where she can check out a book. At least that's what I thought she was asking. It was difficult to understand her. I give her directions to the circulation desk.
Today is Tuesday. But it's not boring. Today was interesting. Not just because of the events or whatever that occurred -- they weren't really anything super exciting -- but because of the way these events made me think. Short, heavy-set lady with the crying daughter had something tragic happen to them. They lost their grandpa. The lady lost her dad -- her father. Meditation security guy made me think too. About priorities. Same thing with Dan. Spending ten grand on a glass desk that could be bought for a quarter of the price anywhere else made me wonder. Same with the two homeless guys that came to the office. And Greg, too. These were all different people. They each have their own lives, their own ideas about mortality. About life and death and politics. They have their greatest moments and dark moments too. We all have our own priorities.
I found God in each of these events. Specifically what, I can't really describe.
I remember reading a 'bucket list' of sorts for the year 2010 earlier today. Things like learn how to cook an amazing meal or get out of debt or run a marathon. But one thing on the list was to start a relationship that is not about you. Start a relationship that inconveniences you. One that costs you time. Or money even. One that's not about the possibility of romance or personal gains. One that is about the other person, not you.
I'm selfish, I know. But I wonder how each one of these person's lives would be different if they had a person who was friends with them not because of their own personal interests. If someone paid attention to them. Short, heavy-set lady and her crying daughter would feel more loved and less afraid. Maybe. Homeless guy may have someone to talk to and share his life with. Same with David Hepburn and Greg. Greg just works at the library all of the time, waiting to start his dream as a law student. I wonder what he does in his free time. Waiting-to-get-into-law-school Greg. Would they change? Any of them? If you inconvenienced yourself for them? I think meditative security guy had the right idea. What if I spent time with my Father on New Year's instead of...sleeping?
Priorities decide who we are because they decide what we do. Selfish priorities produce a selfish being.
The first book I was reading was about an addict who would pretend to choke on bits of food while he ate at classy restaurants in order to feel loved. He would potentially risk his life in order to feel like he mattered to the world. I wonder if Greg or homeless guy would ever do that. Risk their lives to feel like someone cared. Would homeless people stop trying to kill each other or have each other arrested if they felt loved?
Tuesday. Meditative-sorrowful-violated-scared-angry-excessive-selfish-impatient-unloved-Tuesday.
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