Civil Servant Savants

I had to go down to the Culver City Police Department to get my Live Scan done. Live scan is basically a fancy real time finger printing machine. I was expecting this seedy police department with fat officers eating donuts and hookers and junkies getting shoved past me into dank musty holding cells. Pretty much like when you ride the subway in NYC. But when I got there it was immaculately clean with a fresh lemon scent. More like a college library than a police department. I told the short blonde officer at the desk that she didn't look like the grizzled and surly police sergeant that you saw on movies and TV who bossed you around with a snarl. She was all smiles and dimples, pleasantly plump and about 5 Ft two inches tall with a little pony tail. Where's the real desk officer I wondered. But officer Gallagher assured me that she could be mean when she had to be. Then she giggled. I have seen girlscouts who are more intimidating. So I waited my turn to get scanned. They're scanning me because I'll be student teaching soon and they want to make sure I don't have a history of luring children to my gingerbread house and hacking them up into little kid coleslaw. Since the only thing I've ever done to a kid (since I was a kid) is put one of them in a soft headlock I wasn't particularly worried. I joked to the man doing the finger scanning that I sure hoped that the Department of Justice and FBI files aren't connected to Interpol." Har-har-har. "What's Interpol?" He asked. "Um... It's the international police force." I told him. He had no idea what I was talking about. I tried to explain what Interpol was and that if I had a European Criminal record that I'd be in big trouble. Did he get that one? No. He looked at me curiously. "Have you been convicted of crimes overseas?" "No, officer, I was just trying to make a joke to pass the time while you hold my hand and press my fingers onto a view screen." Some people like holding hands with men in unifrom, but I don't. The officer thought for a second. "I think you're allowed to commit crimes, as long as you're on vacation." I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was making a joke of his own, but in my heart I believe he was just thinking out loud. I should get some stupid civil service job. I'm highly qualified to know nothing. The other day when I went to the post office to try and track down a package, the woman asked me where the parcel was coming from and I told her... "Melbourne." "Oh," she said, "from Israel." I was shocked by the level of stupidity, but I was nice about it. "Uh no," I said "the other Melbourne, the one in Australia." So, based solely on these two instances I'm going to generalize and say that "all civil servants are stupid." That should upset somebody enough to make a comment on my blog. I'm taking a nap now. If the incompetence of our government plunges us into a thermo-nuclear war, please don't wake me. I know how it ends.