Sex and the Security Guard

I found the note on my coat, beneath the bench in the hallway at the Mall of America.

I walk at the Mall, early in the morning, before any stores open. Many of us walk at the Mall, especially in winter. It is warm, there are three rectangular floors with walkways that go all the way around, each about a kilometer long.

There seem to be work crews in the Mall all night long, remodeling, repainting, changing decor, repairing the escalators, and doing everything best done when the public is not there. There are, also, security guards, especially since 9/11/2001.

In winter, it is very cold outside the Mall, so one either takes off one's winter coat and leaves it in the car, or takes it in, where there are rental lockers or, increasingly, a number of us who leave our jackets--usually chosen for their ratty, not-worth-stealing look, on a bench or on the floor. I found the note on my coat, on the floor.

The note looked improvised. I turned it over.

The security guard obviously did not have a tablet of official notices. He has a book due at the Hennepin County Library on February 5th, though.

I suppose things get a little slow, overnight, while keeping us safe from terrorist attacks.

I suppose it might not have been a security guard. Maybe it was just a concerned, sex-starved citizen lurking over there by the lockers.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog