Nine Days To Go

I’m feeling like a kid again. Why the end of fourth grade stands out so clearly in my mind, I don’t know. It may have had something to do with an overnight at Dean Bernard’s house on the last day of school. The sky was brilliant blue. The temperature was perfect. And I was free of the classroom for the next three months. The giddiness of graduating high school was similar, but by then I knew that college was waiting at the other end of summer. In nine days, I’m going to walk away from this oppressive place. That sounds ungrateful, I know, but the past eleven-and-a-half years have not been the happiest of my life. At every other occupation of my storied career I was basically treated as an adult. Positions of responsibility—field underwriter, peace officer, pastor—naturally accepted the degree of one’s maturity necessary to do the job. But here at DAFS, as I told the Assistant D.A. who immediately preceded the current one, it’s just one big junior high. There have been repeated lectures on dress code. Upper management rules by fear, imposing quotas and frequently flying the “termination” flag high if you fail to meet them. I’m really surprised that I don’t need a hall pass to go to the men’s room (although I think our movements are carefully monitored by those brown-noses who themselves hope to be in management some day). We clock in, work noiselessly in our cubicles, and then clock out. In nine more days I’m going to walk from this place, and I may even flip a California howdy to the surveillance camera.