Sorry If I Made You Feel Safe

I found this piece I wrote around Christmas a number of years ago. I cleaned it up a bit ( I was trying to be a better writer than I was, <maybe I still am>) and thought I would post it. Enjoy

I spend this holiday season temping for extra money. My day begins At 930. I arrive at my city's corporately owned sports stadium. A cathedral dedicated to athleticism and monetized by the sales of junk food and cheap beer. Upon arrival, I am informed I will be performing security theater for the grand spectacle of collegiate basketball. My qualifications to perform such a task; I own black pants and a white shirt. My charge will alternate between inspecting bags for any one of 24 prohibited items such as guns and sandwiches and caressing a few chosen people with a magnetic wand. Sometimes it flashes a red light and beeps sometimes it is silent. Either way, I let the plebs pass as I have not been instructed to do anything when the wand beeps. Nor do I care. Working beside me are people dressed in red shirts. At first, I believe they are my superior as they own a red shirt, which I do not. This mis-cognition is soon rectified as I realize they are just as befuddled as any of us white shirts, despite their more chromatically advanced wardrobe.

I have never been a sports fan. I never felt like part of a group. If I'm in a group of any kind it's because I like the people in the group. I'm not a spectator. When I watch people do something I am doing so as to learn how I can do what they are doing and to absorb their knowledge. On a visceral level, I am averse to uniforms seeing them only as props that fade out our individuality. I will wear one in exchange for money though, which makes me sort of a reverse stripper.

There is a repetition of sports I do not understand. Why would you want to play the game the same way every time? Why would you even play the same game day after day? It makes no more sense than playing the same song every day. That said I have come to respect sports as a religion of sorts. It requires devotion. Spending so many hours every week on a couch or barstool is certainly as arduous as any meditation. It reduces the complexities of the world into an understandable good vs evil. Our team are angels. The opponents are demons who walk the earth. Just because I rather listen to a lashed tongue preacher illuminate how my soul will be gnashed by horny demons for an infinite of eternities, than a commercial that seduces my limbic system into thinking my desire for sex can be satisfied by another Budweiser doesn't make sports any less ecclesiastical.

In some ways, sports surpass the traditionally accepted great faiths of the world. They offer its worshiper's cathartic release. The emotions of thousands of fans are simultaneously puppeteered through the combative dance of indifferent athletes. The only shared scripture needed is the scoreboard. What activity in mundane life offers a chance at unfettered cheer and arguably, more importantly, where can one boo, without social reprimand. Boo that failed marriage, the boss who fired you, your estranged loved ones, cancer, death, and anything else that weighs down our souls. Every call by a referee that contradicts the cultural bias of the fans expells, at least temporarily, demonic energies. If this isn’t magic, I don’t know what is.

As my focus drifts back to my task I do what I can to keep my brain from completely shutting off from boredom. I take an informal survey on what the popular meds are these days. I admire the ingenuity people employ to smuggle food into the stadium. Food that I will pretend not to see. Food that my professional colleagues will complain about people sneaking in. I do my best to reassure them that yes it's unreasonable to expect people to bring food with them when the only available food for them will be $7 slices of pizza. I also try to figure out why they care.

In all this, I begin to cynically admire how sophisticated the security scam is. There is a tradition of selling people the illusion of safety. Not too long ago children were taught that a standard issue 4th grade desk would safely shield them from any atomic weapons and radioactive fallout Soviets could engineer with their commie brains. Today people are conditioned to think they are safe because someone with a white shirt is throwing away their lunch. Truth is I nor anyone is keeping you safe. Of course, that is not why I was hired. I was hired so in case someone did go full metal berserk having security outsourced through a temp agency takes litigious heat off the stadium owners. This is a corporatized religion after all.

Not that I think stadium owners should be responsible for something so random, but the legal superstition we live under dictates they would be. How moral all this is, eludes me. I’d do it again, of course, if I needed the money. My sins in this are small. Still, it was not honest. I do apologize to anybody who thought they were safe, because of my presence. Despite my appearance, I did not mean to give you that impression.