Mother_Nature_Is_A_Bad_Babysitter
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I never expected to wear a badge.
Then again, I never expected to be a park ranger, either, because I always thought that meant living in the damn woods, away from precious things like subways and nightclubs and 24-hour Chinese food. But this was New York, which has tens of thousands of acres of parkland to its name, and which is one of the only cities in the country where the job title 'Urban Park Ranger' is not a joke. Even if our uniforms did resemble those of garbage men - at least we had hats.
I suddenly found myself in the odd position of having authority, which is a very odd position for a skinny white boy to have in the Bronx. I wear glasses that can fry ants at a hundred paces, and pack as much of a punch as a kitten parachuting into a flower bed. Me trying to raise my voice against true New Yorkers is like trying to fight a wildfire with a super soaker.
I was not born in New York, and that made me the odd-man out for my entire crew. My partners were, in no particular order, a butch Italian lesbian from Queens who threw sex parties with her wife; an Indian-American biology major who later went to med school in Aruba; an Iroquois-Taino former landscaper who once marched with the Zapatistas in Mexico, a Puerto Rican DJ who spun reggaeton and drank Crystal, and a Honduran Sunni Muslim with his own personal pair of handcuffs. I...was a dork who reads strange books in bad light. And throughout the entire season, my sergeant constantly called me, 'Paul,' the name of the only other white guy in the entire department. Because really, how was she supposed to tell us apart.
We all got along swimmingly. And 'swimmingly' is a great way to get along, really, when your first bonding experience involves a canoe rescue 'practice run' gone horrible awry. Nothing stirs the heart to new heights of teamwork like watching ninety percent of your coworkers flip headfirst into the Atlantic Ocean, and looking at each other wistfully as you all drift off with the currents as a team. If you're lucky, you might manage ground yourself on a dollop of mollusks, use your belts to lash together five canoes out of sheer desperation, and row for an hour against the tide in an attempt to get back to the beach before sundown.
Most jobs, when they ask you about your capacity for crowd control, are more often than not refering to mobs of snot-nosed birthday parties at Chucky Cheese. In New York, 'crowd control' means quelling the rage of a million dehydrated Puerto Ricans during the annual parade, after the NYPD shunts them all onto Central Park East. And 'professionalism' means that your college intern can bang the park fitness instructor after-hours in the nature center and have no one be the wiser. Seriously, how were we supposed to know. She was stealthy.
We were called over to the beach, so as to rattle out two skunks from behind the sink in the woman's rest room. A snapping turtle got lost, and we carried him a quarter-mile to the local pond while the bastard strained his neck like laffy taffy to get a bite of my pinky finger. And one day there sat a guinea fowl, in the Bronx, in one of the woman's bathroom stalls. It had a two-foot line of string running up its throat and out its mouth. We don't know why.
We adopted a baby skunk: its parents had abandoned him, and we spent a whole afternoon running about the woods to rustle up some - literally - grub. Occasionally he did a one-eighty and let loose with his pint-sized stink cannon, with all the adorable oomph of a butterfly bumping against your cheek. One of the sergeants gave him the obvious name, 'Flower.'
And the children. Children everywhere. We become the favorites of a local daycare, and every day we tried to trot out some wholesome, child-friendly fact about Science. The kids always borrowed my hat: a Smokey the Bear-style, woven-straw fashion flashback. A local newspaper crew arrived to take our picture as we taught the cutest lesson of the year, about butterflies.
I'd worked there for a full season when my parents divorced. So after years of living in one of the greatest cities in the world, I turned in my badge and booked a flight three thousand miles away. Taking care of my family and loved ones is my first job. My paycheck is secondary.
The night before I left New York, a transformer exploded on my block, knocking out the power for the entire neighborhood. The street flooded with Bengali prayer mats and Dominican pick-up football games. I went with my roommate and father for chinese food, and we watched cops set up traffic flares while a stray cicada hurled itself against the neon lights.
I never expected to wear a badge.
Then again, I never expected to be a park ranger, either, because I always thought that meant living in the damn woods, away from precious things like subways and nightclubs and 24-hour Chinese food. But this was New York, which has tens of thousands of acres of parkland to its name, and which is one of the only cities in the country where the job title 'Urban Park Ranger' is not a joke. Even if our uniforms did resemble those of garbage men - at least we had hats.
I suddenly found myself in the odd position of having authority, which is a very odd position for a skinny white boy to have in the Bronx. I wear glasses that can fry ants at a hundred paces, and pack as much of a punch as a kitten parachuting into a flower bed. Me trying to raise my voice against true New Yorkers is like trying to fight a wildfire with a super soaker.
I was not born in New York, and that made me the odd-man out for my entire crew. My partners were, in no particular order, a butch Italian lesbian from Queens who threw sex parties with her wife; an Indian-American biology major who later went to med school in Aruba; an Iroquois-Taino former landscaper who once marched with the Zapatistas in Mexico, a Puerto Rican DJ who spun reggaeton and drank Crystal, and a Honduran Sunni Muslim with his own personal pair of handcuffs. I...was a dork who reads strange books in bad light. And throughout the entire season, my sergeant constantly called me, 'Paul,' the name of the only other white guy in the entire department. Because really, how was she supposed to tell us apart.
We all got along swimmingly. And 'swimmingly' is a great way to get along, really, when your first bonding experience involves a canoe rescue 'practice run' gone horrible awry. Nothing stirs the heart to new heights of teamwork like watching ninety percent of your coworkers flip headfirst into the Atlantic Ocean, and looking at each other wistfully as you all drift off with the currents as a team. If you're lucky, you might manage ground yourself on a dollop of mollusks, use your belts to lash together five canoes out of sheer desperation, and row for an hour against the tide in an attempt to get back to the beach before sundown.
Most jobs, when they ask you about your capacity for crowd control, are more often than not refering to mobs of snot-nosed birthday parties at Chucky Cheese. In New York, 'crowd control' means quelling the rage of a million dehydrated Puerto Ricans during the annual parade, after the NYPD shunts them all onto Central Park East. And 'professionalism' means that your college intern can bang the park fitness instructor after-hours in the nature center and have no one be the wiser. Seriously, how were we supposed to know. She was stealthy.
We were called over to the beach, so as to rattle out two skunks from behind the sink in the woman's rest room. A snapping turtle got lost, and we carried him a quarter-mile to the local pond while the bastard strained his neck like laffy taffy to get a bite of my pinky finger. And one day there sat a guinea fowl, in the Bronx, in one of the woman's bathroom stalls. It had a two-foot line of string running up its throat and out its mouth. We don't know why.
We adopted a baby skunk: its parents had abandoned him, and we spent a whole afternoon running about the woods to rustle up some - literally - grub. Occasionally he did a one-eighty and let loose with his pint-sized stink cannon, with all the adorable oomph of a butterfly bumping against your cheek. One of the sergeants gave him the obvious name, 'Flower.'
And the children. Children everywhere. We become the favorites of a local daycare, and every day we tried to trot out some wholesome, child-friendly fact about Science. The kids always borrowed my hat: a Smokey the Bear-style, woven-straw fashion flashback. A local newspaper crew arrived to take our picture as we taught the cutest lesson of the year, about butterflies.
I'd worked there for a full season when my parents divorced. So after years of living in one of the greatest cities in the world, I turned in my badge and booked a flight three thousand miles away. Taking care of my family and loved ones is my first job. My paycheck is secondary.
The night before I left New York, a transformer exploded on my block, knocking out the power for the entire neighborhood. The street flooded with Bengali prayer mats and Dominican pick-up football games. I went with my roommate and father for chinese food, and we watched cops set up traffic flares while a stray cicada hurled itself against the neon lights.