The (wo)man's bringin' me down

I’m that guy. The one that’s too young. The one with the slightly disheveled, slightly longer-than-necessary hair. The one with the tattered backpack, complete (NOT 'replete' as one of my adoring fans has pointed out in the COMMENT section below) with broken zipper. The one jamming the obscenely ubiquitous white ipod headphones that scream, “you’re not a fifty year old scientist!” Add it up and what do you get: a victim of the National Academies security guard profiling. That’s right.

There’s this one harridan with eagle eyes, that perches in her eagle’s nest, sharpening her eagle’s talons…just waiting to sink those claws into my shoulder blades so she can carry my dangling body off and throw me to her horde of bloodthirsty eagle children, who will process my flesh like deli turkey and feast upon my innards as I writhe in the dying throes of agony.

It’s a lot like that, I’m not kidding.

Every time I spot that lady I start to lose my cool. My breathing comes in choked fits while I ponder the forbidding consequences of saying the wrong thing or looking the wrong way. Even the mechanics of walking elude me at this critical moment as I stumble over my toe, catching myself in an all-too-obvious attempt to conceal my anxiety.

“Excuse me, sir. Sir? Excuse me, Sir! Can I see your identification please?” I muster up my courage, clench my fists, and turn on my heels to face her. There she is. Again. The same lady that raked me over hot coals last week.

I show her my identification. The similarities between the photo and my face are striking and undeniable. Still, she scrutinizes both with those piercing eyes, intently searching for an awkward reflection of light, a bent corner.

She silently hands it back to me…and I prepare for the admonishment.

Just as the sun rises each day, the admonishment follows: “Sir, you are aware that Academy policy requires you wear your identification around your neck for public view. You are aware of that, right?”

Huh, that’s fascinating. Thanks for the Academies’ civics lessons you evil Amazon…Let’s talk about four score and seven…meaning, of course, the 87 people that just walked through the door in front of me, none of whom were adorned with a visible badge. Let’s talk about you and me and those bronze-cast maize plants settling this thing right here, right now! I scream at her in my imaginary snake tongue.

“Sorry about that, I forgot my badgeholder upstairs,” is the tail-stuck-between-legs answer that ekes its silly way out of my mouth.

Now I think back to all those news stories we read about Americans of Middle Eastern descent being harassed unnecessarily in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. I think about the African Americans on DC streets who often aren’t even graced with eye contact because it’s automatically assumed they’re panhandling. I think about the girls in high school counselors' offices being subtly, or not so subtly, directed towards their more "natural" path in the humanities.

Then I think to myself, “Profiling blows.”