Preface To Guards: My Own Small Experience In Guarding

No, I have never worked as a security guard.  I've never been employed in any type of security or guarding at all.  Except.  Let me think.

You know, I was thinking about this.  In the Peanuts comic, if I am remembering correctly, there were times when some of the characters got to be crossing guards.  Which means, the people who walked into the road to stop the automobiles from coming through an intersection when children were passing.  If that were something that happened in the past, it did not happen when I was a kid.  Crossing guards were almost always slightly loopy retirees who probably had nothing else to do that day.  Allowing kids to do it would have been crazy.

But perhaps we had hall monitors.  These fucking quislings were students who told on other students who might be trying to cut class or otherwise sneak around, perhaps to go to the bathroom.  I don't remember if my school had hall monitors, but I suppose I would've been glad to be one, anything to relieve the boredom of schooling.  Although standing in the halls pretending to have authority would have been just as boring.  I would not have felt that a sash or a title would have allowed me to tell anyone to do anything.

Probably the one time I ever guarded - or the two times, or whatever - would be whenever I worked the door at some radio station benefit.  In effect, I was a bouncer, which, you must admit, is a kind of guard.  Many times have I checked IDs, looked up will-call names, put wristbands on or stamped hands, all at benefits for whatever radio station I was currently deejaying at.

& if those are experience as guards, then I have virtually no experience at all.  I've never turned anyone away, or tried to cow a disgruntled customer, or thrown my weight around at some difficult situation.  Would I be good at such a thing?  I doubt it!

As for the official guards - the National Guard, the Coast Guard, the Guardians Of The Galaxy - I of course don't qualify for those.  Too old, flat feet, a coward - too many reasons why not.

Anyway, if I were a security guard, it would end up like this poor bastard in The Wire: