This is only a test

 

Friday, October 04, 2013

 

I took a deep breath when I got to the front steps of the school, knowing that after a year, this was not going to be an easy moment – or hour – or whatever time it might take to name the place after the man and I could head south again.

I had no problem with the man or the ceremony, but the depth of feelings I feared I might feel or resentment I might get, or any of those other things we always exaggerate.

This was a kind of test – since I had spent the year avoiding any possible contact, even to the point of not going to places I knew I should go.

Co-existence is what I hoped to find, to be able to work and wander in the same physical place and not have world war three break out.

This was a test of this emergency broadcast system.

This was only a test.

How to get back to a point where I can work in the same environment without being seen as a threat.

You can’t ever win trust back after you have betrayed it – so I know there are limits to this co-existence, and the best I can hope for is to be tolerated, which except for a somewhat humorous altercation with an non-uniform cop – I got.

The important thing about this is to make sure I don’t cross over into that orbit more than necessary – and so to hope to maintain this tolerance – a gift I should not expect frequently, and do not deserve at all.

Later during the event, I was too busy doing my job to worry as much, except to feel pangs of past guilt which are less than they were by far a year ago when I felt worse than when went before a judge as a kid.

This was a test of the emergency broadcast system.

This was only a test.

God knows, it’s a test I sweated over, and always will.