It feels condemning to be sitting in the lobby of a police department. I can't help but feel guilty, as if I've committed some awful crime, and any second the next officer that walks through the door will call my name, wrap handcuffs around my wrists, and read me my Miranda rights. It's silly, because I haven't done anything wrong.
Sitting here gives me the same irrational fear that walking through TSA does, that somehow the drugs I don't do or the gun I don't own, will miraculously appear in my luggage, and I'll spend the rest of my life in prison. Or when a cop drives behind me on the road and, even though I'm following every road law, I'm convinced they will pull me over. It's insane, possibly neurotic, but I'm also sure it's how almost every person feels when around a government authority.
Even the reason why I'm sitting in this office, to be finger printed for a background check, has me a bit on edge. What if they discover the car I've never stolen, or the murder I didn't commit? What if something pops up in my impeccably clean record that keeps me from teaching? Being a teacher is more than a career; it's my purpose. To take teaching away from me would be equivalent to taking my heart out of my chest, I would simply cease to be alive.
Which is why I brought myself here after work, because if I don't get my background check sent in and cleared, I can't continue going to my job, and that's not an option. It's funny sometimes how you can fear multiple things, but a greater fear can help you conquer a lesser fear. It's not that I fear the police, I'm thankful to know that they are there to help if I'm in an emergency, it's just that I fear being in trouble.
When I graduated college and got married two years ago, I'd always wanted to settle down in a small town, but my husband was a new lawyer, and all beginning lawyers have to do their time in a big city. He promised that two years would be enough to satisfy his father, then a position would be opened at his family's firm, and we could move to his small hometown. I was so deeply in love, with teaching and with Aaron, that I didn't mind. What were two years teaching in a big city compared to the lifetime we would build in this town? I was a lot more naïve back then.
When the school year ended in early June, true to his word, Aaron packed up our apartment and moved us a few states down to his hometown of Eden, North Carolina. I'd visited a lot after we first started dating, we even got married in the mountains an hour away. Eden was the pearly gates of heaven after the rough two years we'd endured, and I couldn't wait to finally start our life the way we'd both dreamed it to be.
It wasn't until yesterday that the principal at my new school, Mrs. Newton, informed me that I needed another background check run, since I had moved my license to another state. In the rush of the last six weeks of setting up our new house, finding a job, and then arranging a classroom, it completely skipped my mind. She told me that I could still work, since school started Monday, but I needed to at least have it processing before then.
Which is why I'm sitting here, nervous, watching the clock tick closer and closer to five. My contract hours end at three, and since this is the last day before school started and my classroom is already set up, I thought I would have plenty of time. But that was before I got an email from a parent with concerns about their child's readiness, then I spilled coffee over my desk with our welcome coloring sheet, and just when I was running out the door, my chatty neighboring kindergarten teacher decided to stop me for thirty minutes to discuss how frustrating she'd heard one of the parents are. By the time I parked in the lot and ran into the station, I received a warranted eyeroll from the secretary when I asked for a last-minute fingerprinting.
She told me that she would see if any officers were still in, and if they would be willing to process me so close to closing time. That was fifteen minutes ago. It's now ten minutes to five, and I'm too scared to ask her if she found anyone who could help me, but I'm also getting desperate.
