Mad Atoms

Working security on the campaign trail has its benefits.   An all-access pass for the venue combined with a close proximity to my favorite candidates and celebrities can make for some pretty interesting adventures.  Don't get me wrong; the "security" part is pretty monotonous and boring.  Of course, idle hands are the Devil's tools… This was the case at the Republican National Convention.  I was bored, generally disinterested by the GOP, and unimpressed by the lame rioters (In fact, I ran into "The Anarchist Leader"(sic) and we spoke over lattes at Caribou Coffee. In addition to his oxymoronic name, he also shared with me the black shirt uniform regulation of his followers and the hour-by-hour itinerary of their chaotic rioting – “Throw trash bin into traffic” was item #1).  By the second day, I found my hands idle with only a tube of epoxy and a pocketful of spare change to pass the time.

With a gaggle of cops behind me trying to control their childish giggling, I glued a quarter to the sidewalk right in front of the VIP entrance to the arena.  The CNN interns came first – always on the move, they were responsible for getting equipment into the venue from the camps outside. 

They walked right through my territory and one after another tripped over their own feet to pick up the quarter and furiously stormed off when we could hold our laughter no more.  I felt remorse when a Delegate from my home state of California fell for the gag, but then I reasoned that he was probably a douche anyway for misrepresenting our great Blue state. Then, on the night of the historic and very hilarious Sarah Palin lipstick joke, we caught ourselves a trophy bass: Bob Barr, Libertarian Candidate for President.

We immediately recognized the tiny man with his ridiculous mustache and a gleam in his blue eyes as he spotted the quarter.  The cops and I held our breath.  He kicked it several times to no avail before bending over to pick at it with a stern tenacity one would expect from a third-party candidate.  If only we hadn’t started to chuckle – I’d like to think that he would have picked at it forever.  "I thought it was my lucky day." He said as he surrendered.  Nope, not today.  Jerk.