Tacomaroma

Do you smell that?

Wait, do you mean the smell of fear? ... or the smell of paper mill funk as you drive by the Tacoma Dome (where Britney and the cast of both Glee and American Idol come to wow the crowds)? That's right, it doesn't really matter. They smell awful similar.

Picture it:

We were in Tacoma visiting colleagues at the Tacoma office -- something of a storefront operation accessible to both the physically handicapped (thanks to a lovely long ramp) and the batshit crazy! We had just returned from the office, perhaps a little overexcited about our yummerino soups from Infinite Soups (surely the gem of Tacoma), when I noticed a man beginning the in-accordance-with-the-law-gradual incline of the ramp outside. I was curious, as he struck me as different than our usual volunteer interviewee (but, as he was an African American male, I thought this was more a good thing than something to be concerned about). It wasn't until he entered the building that I had occasion to think otherwise.

As he shut the door behind him, I heard a whisper from behind me of my soup-slurping colleague saying (in dramatic fashion) "He locked the door." Of course, this started me into a bit of a panic, but being a cool customer, I suppressed this instinct, welcomed our guest, and waited for him to announce his business ... all the while trying to gauge whether the door had truly been locked (it appeared that if any lock had been engaged, it was only the button lock on the door handle, which would have no impact on one's exit from the premises.)

Our guest was a flurry of vocabulary from the get-go, requesting a private audience with "either a male or a female" staff member about a "confidence matter" before rejecting this idea and settling into a folding chair next to our lunch table (conveniently located mere feet from the entrance) and launching into his story without really any preamble (or else it was all preamble -- as you'll see, it became difficult to tell).

He proceeded to tell us about his situation. He had somehow been transplanted (by train, it appeared) from Maryland and had accumulated a menagerie of teenaged daughters (each of a different ethnicity: white, black, Latino, and Native American ... pretty impressive) that were experiencing no small amount of turmoil. He told us that one of his daughters had been raped by "the Cubans" and (after a long detour into his current strained relationship with one of the girl's mothers involving DV (Domestic Violence) charges and stolen food stamps) mentioned that he may or may not be on something of a vigilante trip to destroy the aforementioned Cubans. He framed all of this as something of a warning to the ineffectual and bureaucratic "system" (a.k.a. the Tacoma Police?) that he may do something and repeatedly said that -- should he do something -- he wanted there to be a record that he had come to somebody beforehand.

His story, when intelligible at all, certainly had elements with which one might sympathize, but mixed in with the other two-thirds of his diatribe that was entirely incoherent and increasingly disturbing. Upon rereading the above crystallization of his ramblings, I see I have not done them justice. Suffice it to say that when our guest mentioned that he would have "no problem pulling the trigger" and flashing what I took to be a somewhat menacing glance in my direction and then proceeded to (we think) inform us that he had two "sides" (either coleslaw and mac and cheese from KFC or sideARMS?) on him that I decided it was finally time to unfreeze my petrified ass and try to coax our friend toward the door.

This was achieved more or less without incident, though he made some ominous reaches into amorphous pockets (to turn off a Walkman, as it turned out), some raised voices, and some decided dilly-dallying around picking up his backpack to leave.

Upon his departure, the authorities were informed of the general gist of our lunchtime conversation, after which I chugged the cold remnants of my "Ethiopian Greens" soup and got the hell out of Tacoma. On the way back to the office, my fellow manager and I compared "last moment thoughts" which ranged from "when I get shot in the stomach, how likely is it that a police officer or other emergency respondent will arrive in time to save me?" to "I bet this would be so much less definitively frightening if I were more religious."

In any case, life continues, despite another visit to Tacoma, and with that continued life come continued reflections: How much danger was I ever actually in? Did I handle the situation appropriately? Should I have given "our guest" more leeway? Less leeway? Should I assume that every middle-aged man with a large backpack and fatigue pants walking up to the office is a threat?

Luckily Ethiopian Greens soup tastes good hot AND luke-warm-to-coldish. That's all I've got to say about that.