“I don’t have to carry mace or any weapons, we don’t have riot gear.”
“Yeah, but my job has led me to meeting a lot of cops and people in corrections. Those people are all power hungry nutballs.”
I sat there confused. Maybe he was right. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I had never known anyone who worked in corrections. I wasn’t even friends with criminal justice majors in college.
My father ate another piece of pizza and said, “See, I like my job. I like cameras, I like talking about cameras, I like getting new cameras, I like thinking about cameras, and camera angles. I love cameras. I don’t even care about the local news. The local news can screw itself for all I care. I wouldn’t mind filming birds or action movies, it doesn’t matter as long as I’m surrounded by cameras and other people who love cameras. But I have never heard you express any love for corrections or criminals.”
“But I’ve been told if I do this job for a year it will be a great reference.”
“A great reference to what, being a cop?”
I sat there defeated. I didn’t want him to talk anymore.
Then my mother said, “What happened to that girl you were dating in college? Linda?”
“Linda went to law school.”
Then my father said, “Why don’t you go to law school?”
“There are enough lawyers. The world doesn’t need another one.”
“But how are you going to make enough money to raise a family,” said my mother.
“I don’t know. The economy is really bad. What do you want me to do?”
“We want you to have a good job,” said my father.
It had never occurred to me that I was supposed to have a good job. I still had no kids and no wife, which to me meant I had no reason to care about such things. I just wanted to have enough money to live and party a little.
My father said, “I think you were screwing around your senior year of college and didn’t take the GRE or LSAT, and now you have to work this shitty job.”
It was true; all I wanted to do was graduate and get on with my life. Everyone was talking about going to grad school or moving to Chicago or New York City to start incredible careers, but instead I would smoke weed and drink a few beers and go to sleep. People would ask me what I wanted to do after I graduated and I would tell them that I just wanted to start my life. It was true, I was tired of school. I was tired of showing up to class and listening to lectures, I was tired of doing assignments, I was tired of going to school all week and working on the weekends. I wanted days off, I wanted two days off a week to lay around and read a book, watch YouTube videos, and maybe get good at golf.
To keep them quiet, I said, “How about I take the GRE and LSAT this winter and apply for grad schools in the spring?”
My father nodded his head in approval and then my mother said, “You better start working on your math now. You know you aren’t good at math.”
“Yes, I will start working on my math.”
I eventually left my parents’ house. It was the same thing every time; all they wanted to do was discuss my life. My life was a huge issue to them. We never discussed their lives. According to them their lives were great. I believed it was a political stance that parents took, a nice, noble lie parents from the middle-class told their children. They told their children their lives were great and that if they did what they were told then everything would turn out great. I didn’t know anything about my parents; they never discussed their personal feelings or childhood memories with me. I had no idea if my father was a drunk during his college years or if my mother was a slut in high school. I didn’t know if my parents ever had suicidal thoughts or what kind of women my dad was attracted to. My parents had sex, but what kind of sex, I didn’t know. As you grow older, you start to realize that your parents have lives of their own, separate from you, but by that time your parents have formed the habit of keeping you out of their lives, and no matter how old you get they will never let you get to really know them.
On my way home I wondered if my father was right. Was I making a good decision about working for NEOTAP? I knew it wasn’t my dream job but I still hadn’t figured out what my dream job would be. I had applied for jobs I actually wanted but they weren’t hiring. It was either work for NEOTAP or work for a factory for $8.50 an hour or keep serving at a restaurant.
The Slogans of NEOTAP
Heidelberg led me to her office. To get to the office we had to walk through an area where the residents were sitting. There were about fifty residents in the room. I looked at them, some of them looked at me. They were career criminals. These people were considered so heinous and deviant that they needed to be locked up. The United States court system found that they could not control themselves, they were a danger to themselves and to others. Society deemed it necessary that large amounts of money should be spent locking them in a single building.
The room was silent.
Fifty career criminals and no one was talking.
Not a single mouth making a noise.
They were pacified. Sedated.
I said to Rachel, “No one is talking.”
She responded, “Yes, isn’t it wonderful?”
I said, “Yeah, it is great. So what does NEOTAP stand for?”
She said, “It’s an acronym.”
I read her face and it said not to ask any more questions, so I didn’t.
The residents were allowed to wear any clothes they wanted. Almost all of them wore the same Nike shoes, jeans and baggy t-shirts. Their bodies looked strong. Many were widely built.
I asked Rachel, “Are they allowed to work out or play basketball?”
“They are allowed to do pushups and sit-ups after dinner. But residents don’t come here to work out. They come here to be reformed. That was a correct question.”
I knew then, I had to guess the questions. There were questions I was allowed to ask, but I had to figure out which ones I could ask. I could not ask what NEOTAP meant, but I could ask if they exercised.
I asked Rachel, “What is the recidivism rate here?”
“A lot of people ask that,” she said.
I realized I could not ask that question.
Rachel led me into her office. There were barely any decorations except for Kansas City Chiefs memorabilia. There were a few pictures of her husband and children. On the wall in giant bold letters were the slogans of NEOTAP.
We sat down across from each other.
She said, “You look nervous.”
“I’m okay.”
Rachel smiled and said, “Do you like football?”
“I don’t watch it much.”
“I like the Kansas City Chiefs. Do you play fantasy football?”
“No.”
“Oh, we all play fantasy football here. We are all in a league together. I have a pretty good team this year.”
“That sounds good.”
She stopped smiling and pointed to slogans written on a giant piece of paper and said, “Do you see the slogans?”
“Yes.”
“Those are the slogans of NEOTAP.”
“Yes.”
She handed me a piece of paper with the slogans on them. I looked down at the piece of paper. It was titled “The Slogans of NEOTAP.”
She said the first slogan aloud. “If men were angels, we would not need procedure.”
She went on. “This slogan means that men are not good. There is always a section of society that disobeys the laws. This section of society must be restrained from hurting themselves and other people. Society cannot stand law breakers. We have laws for a reason: to maintain order and peace. The law exists so people can live, go to work and raise a family. The law sustains us, but there are people who are greedy, selfish and manipulative, who do not value the law. These citizens must be restrained and reformed. If a citizen cannot be reformed then they will be sent to prison for the rest of their lives. Procedure enables us to live. Through procedure we know how to behave. To live a good life, a good American life, we must obey the procedures that guide our lives. There is a procedure for shopping at a store. You go in, you pick things out and then you pay for them. There is a procedure for voting. You register to vote, you find out where your voting station is, you go there, you wait in line politely and vote when notified. And just like life, there are procedures here at NEOTAP. Everything must be documented at NEOTAP. For a person to leave the building, five papers must be signed and a computer log must be filed. Everything here is documented in a certain way, everything here is procedure. These procedures are just, they coincide with the law. The law gives us direction on how to behave and how to form procedures. Do you understand?”