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June 12, 2006 I'm still ruminating over the fact that twice in the past three months the Humboldt State University campus police have stopped me and demanded that I show them my ID. I regard this as harassment. The thirty minutes wasted on me by these police is a waste of California state funds. Really, I present no threat. Now when the cops come for me I engage them in conversation and we talk awhile. They tell me that they are concerned because I carry two large bags. They say to me, "You should carry a backpack like the other students do." I guess my carrying two large bags on campus is considered "eccentric" and when you come on campus looking "eccentric," you are considered "a suspicious character." You become a TARGET for bullies, just like back in grade school. Hey, I feel just like a KID again! It sucks. Anyway, I often carry two large bags on campus because I need a lot of stuff and I ride the bus into the university. I do not have a car where I can leave my stuff. So what if the police said I should "use a backpack like the other students do," but my body is stiff and getting the backpack on and off is a b-tch. I end up tearing my shirt and my coat on the backpack buckles. Also, on three of my backpacks all the zippers have ceased to work! Talk about built-in obsolescence! That's seventy-five bucks worth of backpacks! Why should I support such a corrupt industry? The big cereal bags I carry cost me no money. Yessssss. My big old cereal bags are a visible personal **********statement**********. Ah yes. Life. Everything is food for thought and grist for the mill. I really do resent the continual harassment by the HSU campus police. I'd like to feel safe on campus. I don't like to feel that the campus cops are out to get me, just because I present an uncommon appearance. Why this campus paranoia? Well, in April this year a young co-ed was raped on the HSU campus. But why should an already uncommonly shy and handicapped elderly man be made even more intimidated by the well-monied, physically adept, mightily muscled, lithe and limber managerial minds of young America? Already two students have called the police on me because I looked odd to them!! Do they imagine that I'm a rapist on the loose? Hey! These are the often-recognized and encouraged youths of promise, the callow messengers of all-American manhood and womanhood, filled with providence and goodness, the gifted and true elite of society, destined with their academic degrees and their physical prowess to carry forth the grandiose delusions of modernity that "we Americans are the best humanity has to offer" (even though we Americans are afraid of what is atypical and we resent the eccentricity of those who are chronically poor or who are not able in the conventional ways we value as all-American providential and good characters made out of ethical and moral cardboard and mortarboard.) The pain of growing up disabled (in the sense of all-American boys and girls) has sometimes made me envision myself as a stone pillar being continually chipped away by mindless non-empathetic missiles continually being fired at me by my peer classmates and my peer neighbors who are bullies comparable to the modern politzei. I watch lots of war films nowadays, to catch up on decades of poverty when the rising costs of a theater ticket made watching a movie prohibitively expensive. World War One, World War Two, Korea, Doctor Strangelove, Vietnam, Yom Kippur War, Kent State, Grey Panthers, Nigeria...yes even Star Wars. I watch video after video because at HSU the movies are free. I see the "good guys" blowing the bojeeezus out of the "bad guys." And when I'm on campus with my two large cereal bags and my green jacket patched up with duck tape because the fricken backpack kept tearing it, well, some students think in their callow stereotyping that I'm one of those homeless men that hang out down at the Arcata Plaza and wander the streets of Arcata with nowhere else to go. The fact is I'm an over-sixty HSU student with a 3.7 grade point average. I guess you might say I'm a duck dressed up to look like an owl. I got camouflage. ------------ About the author: John L. Waters is an amateur psychologist and independent researcher on self-healing, integration, and problem-solving. John has created art, music and songs, prose and poetry, and helped people solve a difficult problem. For more information, read: John's letters of recommendation: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/recommendations about John's self-healing and integration: http://members.tripod.com/johnlwaters/index.html about John's independent research: http://www.humboldt.edu/~jlw47/index.html about John's seeking an agent or a publisher: http://www.writers.net/writers/39295 Email: blueguntwo@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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