Authority Issues

As I drove through a cop stop yesterday, I had the same feeling I had in school class. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and all my paperwork was in order. Yet I still felt that I may get caught out. Guilty of nothing.

I saw a pair of sunglasses lying on the tarmac, as our cars crawled towards the actual road block. I’m not kidding. I stopped my car, opened the door, and picked the sunglasses up.

They were horrible. They looked expensive enough; but they were huge and there was altogether too much black plastic going on in the design. They were like women’s sunglasses for men, although I don’t want to play on gender stereotypes. On me they looked ridiculous with what was left of my face. I looked like an old dog in drag.

When I got to the metro police, the guy in blue stared me down and asked me, ‘Why did you stop? What do you pick up?’ It was his roadblock, his right.

I handed him the glasses. I half expected him to try them on, or return them but he didn’t. He handed them to another cop, who also handed them on — and so it went.

I imagined the sunglasses arriving at police headquarters and being bagged as evidence, of nothing. I looked at the cop and laughed, he laughed back.

In school I sat quietly in the middle of the class. There were bad boys at the back and good boys in the front.

The point of the middle, as in warfare, was that you could regard the actions of both groups and plan your response. It was a sort of pivot at which to build your fortress.

Meanwhile the teachers had their hands full with the good and the bad, so they ignored the middle.

It’s useful to learn your place.