Part of my job entails delivering legal affidavits that I prepare to the court house once a week. Now my dear friend Jen has educated me on the horrors of working in a court house, but visiting once a week is always a fun little outing for me. I get to stretch my legs for a short walk, and partake in a special kind of people watching that exists no where else downtown. There is often raw emotion painted across these faces that are not nearly so well coiffed as the ones I see on a regular basis. From the tired grandmother toting her young grandchild from the adoption courtroom, to the "another day at the office" prostitute lounging on the benches near the entrance, to the blue streak swearing downtown girl who didn't charm her way out of that ticket (and it's funny because every time I see her I think of an American Idol contestant trash talking about Simon.)
So yesterday as I headed in, I couldn't help but cringe. Oh the young man walking in front of me was rich with possibility in the people watching department...longish hair that would make the Beatles proud-were it not so greasy, a black t-shirt with some kind of skull on it, and a kind of painters pants, black (of course) with chains all over them. Chains hanging from the pockets, chains hanging from the chains. Now see this is why I was worried...not because I was afraid of him, but see we're walking into a government building. And you know you don't walk into government buildings without passing through a metal detector these days...and remember he was IN FRONT of me. I suddenly had visions of this poor boy having to walk through that machine in his UnderRoos. And I giggled...a little bit...I imagined him up some Tazmanian Devil Underroos, with the matching undershirt. So I'm weird.
So anyway this kid, just as I do weekly; empties his pockets into the plastic tubs and the contents are exactly the same as mine (I know better than to take the purse with me)...keys, cell phone, smokes and a stray Quick Trip receipt...and he steps back and walks through the machine. And it doesn't go off. Not a squeak or a squelch. And I'm the only one who looked surprised, I'm sure, as he ambled off toward traffic court.
It occurred to me as I wandered through, collecting my own tub of stuff, that the chains are probably painted plastic. And I think about how intimidated many people I know would have been by this kid working so hard to look intimidating, and how they'd never consider that he's as painted up as those chains are and probably half as lethal.
I hope he got out of his ticket...but I kinda doubt it.
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