When I worked the graveyard shift for all those years, a time when I was known as “Mikey Midnight,” I once fell asleep standing up.
It had never happened before, and thankfully, it didn’t repeat itself.
But I remember the strangest sensation, a kind of out-of-body experience that leaves a scar on the imagination, a calling card dropped into your mind like an alien delivery from the Sandman.
I’d read about things like that before, the way the brain takes a breather, mostly affecting dead-tired personnel who were standing sentinel in the military or firefighters in their 20th hour of battling wind-fueled infernos. But I never thought it could happen to me.
After all, as gigs go, handling the job of a security officer manning traffic on the border of a gated residential community, a peaceful place populated primarily by retirees, wasn’t all that demanding.
I’d handle the occasional fall and provide lift assistance, or something more serious like a kitchen fire caused when someone left the oatmeal on the burner a little too long, but as long as you remained vigilant, you could cruise until 8 a.m. for your relief.
The truth is, the overnight trick was my shift of choice, which came as welcome news to the rest of the security staff, who avoided it by any means necessary, preferring me to handle it.
When a guest would lock himself out of his condo, I drove right over and, after having him sign papers permitting me to enter, I took care of the problem, making me a 4 a.m. hero to many.
If someone called the gate to complain about the music being played too loud next door, I knew just what to do, owing to the fact that before joining the security force, it had happened to me. The key was staying calm, not losing your temper and being, well, kind.
There was something rather liberating about working all those hours on your own, and I prided myself on not alerting my superior officers about a problem until I’d exhausted all available solutions.
I mean, you don’t need a bowling ball to squish a mosquito.
Some nights when I was on motor patrol doing my rounds, I’d come across a West Coast baseball game on the radio, and that was always a blessing. There was something relaxing about listening to a pro like Jon Miller paint a word picture, providing theater of the mind as the San Francisco Giants played deep into the Carolina night.
Other times, I happened upon the “aliens and conspiracies hour,” when insomniacs and other misfits felt free to let their freak flags fly, opining on everything from Bigfoot to Area 51, often speaking for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, doing no real harm, just conversing.
Once back at the gatehouse, I’d check for any messages I’d missed, note those that could wait, but return those that seemed urgent.
We provided a service that’s pretty much gone now, owing to fear of litigation and the pratfalls of the so-called “Good Samaritan Law,” a legal catchall/tar pit that put an end to a lot of what we did.
As an example, security had always responded to residents in need of a battery jump, but that all came to a crashing halt when one officer, just trying to help, was accused of shorting out someone’s entire electrical system, though the car had started up perfectly.
Didn’t matter.
The Jaguar owner said it wasn’t his fault, and, like so many accusations we encountered, proving a negative proved to be nearly impossible, thus eliminating one of our core services.
Strangely (or maybe not), the one facet of our post orders that hung on through all the transitions/updates/regime changes was the board’s insistence that any and all repo men were to be allowed on property, regardless of the time of day, the weather or any proof.
In that way, they were exactly like home health care professionals, though their jobs couldn’t have been more different. In the case of the former, someone’s means of transportation was hauled away even as the latter were in the business of making things better.
Never understood that, but then again, I saw no point in arguing.
Bureaucracies are like hornet’s nests … best to steer clear of them.
I lasted 10 years in that job, working my way up from part-time fill-in guy to being the senior-most officer on the staff when I left to accept a position in the corporate sector, a position I held for two years. Never thought I’d last that long in a field new to me.
When my job at the town paper was outsourced to a sketchy city 50 miles inland — which would have required a daily commute of 100 miles in a 1991 Honda Civic — I decided to take a few months off to, you know, catch my breath a little and plan my next move.
If you’d have told me that I wouldn’t work again for four years, that I would spend most of my time traveling the country seeing old friends or relaxing at the beach for weeks at a time, I simply wouldn’t have believed it. But that’s life … you live and learn.
It helps to be a little lucky, too. I mean, landing that security job and making it last for all those months required some good fortune.
But I mostly worked hard, and even when I fell asleep standing up that one time, something valuable had come from the experience.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 1317 Troy Road, Ashland, OH 44805. He invites you to join him on his Facebook page, wherechange is always possible but people are kind.
