Today it was red serge everywhere, high brown boots, stetson hats, brown gloves, puffy pants with yellow stripes down the sides. Troop graduation. Families of cadets everywhere. A desperate need for a badge wallet (among other things), because tomorrow, suddenly they'll have badges. My co-worker recommends that one of the cadets buy the flashlight that runs on double A batteries, because where she's going, lithium ions will be hard to come by, and the other flashlight we sell runs on those. We can't sell her the rechargeable flashlight because it's bigger and her waist is too small, and with a flashlight on her belt, she won't have room for her gun. She needs a pocket flashlight. Already she is having trouble finding room for an extra pair of handcuffs. I think to myself, "I could never do this."
It's a busy day. In between customers I pick up the very old and damaged copy of Russian literary theory that I am trying to wade through for my honours proposal, and I get nowhere. I keep having to reread the previous four sentences, and I make little headway. The cadets look at the title of my book, The Dialogic Imagination, and they shake their heads. They tell me that they're so glad they're not in university. I tell them that this is awesome, it's Einstein's theory of relativity applied to the continuum of time and space in a literary text. Their eyes glaze over. I sell them a copy of Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement. They'll need it.
Our worlds are different.
Tim Blackett likes this.
ReplyDeleteMy eyes just glazed over when I read that, too, and I DO go to University.
ReplyDeleteThis post reads like a poem. Also, your theory book sounds more interesting than the stuff I read for my proposal. A lot of it was like, endings are very important in short stories (moreso than in the novel) -- and I was like yes, I agree, now do I have to right so-and-so says endings are important, I am going to write good endings? I actually kind of wish I could just do that.
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