Two months after graduating from law school in May, 1985, I had to take the bar exam. During late May and all of June and July, I studied seven days/week.
Because I was broke that summer, I worked at the local two-plex movie theater as the janitor, ticket-taker and usher. Each morning, I awoke at 6:00, ate breakfast, walked to the theater, swept and mopped the floors that had been stickified by spilled soda, ice cream and Jujubees, vacuumed the lobby, cleaned the sinks and toilets and gathered and carried the trash across the parking lot to the dumpster.
While I had my own key, one Friday night my boss told me he was changing the entrance lock and that he’d give me the new key the next day, Saturday, at noon before I cleaned in advance of the matinee. I showed up a few minutes early to wait for him.
Healing with DMSO: The...
Best Price: $10.40
Buy New $12.56
(as of 09:06 UTC - Details)
There was a military recruitment storefront directly across the indoor, low echelon mall from the theater entrance. Bored as I waited for the boss that Saturday, I walked over to the stand with the recruiting brochures and viewed them at arm’s length. The recruiter, a dark crew-cut, sharp-featured man about three inches shorter than I and wearing a half-sleeved, chevron-decorated uniform rose from his desk and approached me in my paint-stained shorts and Clash t-shirt. Directly, but respectfully, he proffered, in that oddly pleasing military tone—they don’t repeatedly say “like,” or uptalk— “There are some good opportunities in the military, young man.”
My father had been in the Army. He said he got to play a lot of baseball in Louisiana, where he was stationed. Living in a different part of the US, playing sports, going on long runs while doing those call-and-response rhymes with the drill sergeant and shooting rifles sounded cool.
When I was 18, I figured that having been in the military would become a good job credential. I suggested to my father that I might enlist. He summarily discouraged me. I think he thought—even though Full Metal Jacket had not yet been made—I was like Matthew Modine’s “Rafter Man;” I wouldn’t buy, or fit into, military culture. He was probably right. So I went to college.
I was 27 on that key exchange Saturday and had done a lot of schoolwork since I was 18. I had, by then, fully invested in the white-collar thing. So I smiled and told the recruiter, “I’d be interested but I just graduated from law school and have a job that starts after Labor Day.”
The recruiter, who saw me leave the theater each morning, made a face indicating his belief that I was in deep, pathetic denial. But perhaps still redeemable.
“Oh, really? Law school?”
“Yeah, three years. I’m done. I just have to pass the bar exam.”
I could see him thinking “OK, law school graduate, I see you leaving the theater every morning with your sloppy clothes, carrying stuffed Hefty bags. And what are you doing dressed like this, hanging out in a nearly empty mall at 11:55 in the morning?” (Or, as they say in the military, 1155 hours. I knew this from watching McHale’s Navy on TV as a seven-year-old).
He did ask me why I was working there. I unhesitatingly responded, “I need the money, so I clean the theater. Normally, I let myself in but they just changed the locks and I’m waiting for the boss to show up with the new key.”
Yeah, a likely story. Continuing his cross-examination, he queried, “So, what kind of courses did you take in law school?”
I wished to myself that the bar exam questions would be this easy.
“Well…Property, Contracts, Torts, Legislation, Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure…”
Hi expression changed slightly. He looked like he was starting to believe me. But not completely. He seemed to think I was a facile liar.
I was hoping he’d ask me some substantive questions about what I’d learned in, for example, Constitutional Law. I was ready for whatever he could throw at me.
Instead, he asked, “Where are you going to work now that you’ve graduated from law school?” This time, he didn’t emphasize “law school.”
I had an immediate, specific answer for that one, too. Seemingly convinced, he gave up, shook my hand and wished me well.
The military would, for me, be another path not taken. I felt a small sense of loss. Many males in my family had been soldiers and I felt like a slacker. And doing obstacle courses and knocking other guys in the head with those big, padded sticks looked like fun. Though I guess getting knocked in the head wouldn’t have been.
—
After cleaning the theater each morning, I attended a three-hour prep class, came home, ate lunch, read the prep books for four hours, made note cards and returned to the theater to take (paper) tickets and usher. I spent a fraction of the night shift walking up and down the aisles with a flashlight. I spent the rest reviewing my note cards in the theater’s quiet, red-carpeted and very well-vacuumed lobby.
Organized Crime: The U...
Best Price: $16.07
Buy New $9.95
(as of 05:50 UTC - Details)
Watching snippets of the same movies for two weeks at a time, I noticed that, no matter which night, each audience laughed at the same intensity at each of the respective gags. For example, every audience giggled at Gags A, B and C. But Gag D, when a post-apocalyptic Thunderdome spectator handed Mad Max a chain saw that made his formidable cyborg cage-fighting foe turn and flee like a rabbit, always brought the house down. It got me the first time, too.
If it was a sad movie, you could hear women sighing or sobbing in the climactic scene. I shoulda brought a box of tissues and let viewers take one as I passed up and down the aisles.
I saw that a small sample delivered decent market research. But it was discomfiting to see that people were so predictable and manipulable. Thirty-five years later, the Scamdemic’s orchestrators would show that they knew the same thing.
I, too, saw this when, in mid-March, 2020, I emailed dozens of friends and family, told them that locking down was crazy and either heard back that I was wrong and selfish, or conspicuously got no response at all. I knew, from being an usher, that my random sample reflected broader sentiment. I was stunned and disheartened by peoples’ gullibility and passivity.
