Metal Gear Sandy
Breaking and entering. Vandalism. Password theft. Just some of the crimes I will have barely committed by the end of this tale.
The last time I committed a crime was when a friend of mine made me pick up some marijuana for him while I was away for a week. I’m someone who doesn’t even drink coffee, so this was fairly terrifying to me, as I had to call someone I’d never met, meet them, and do the transaction. When the dealer arrived he was nervous, asked me to tell him somewhere quiet we could go so I directed him to a nearby church. He got out of his car and walked over to a wall with some blackberry bushes on it. Carefully, he placed the product on the wall and walked off. Only I didn’t see that, I just assumed he was pretending to look at the blackberry bushes to give passers by a reason why he had stopped and got out of the car. So I’m stood there, trying to look casual. I think I might have even picked one of the blackberries and inspected it, thinking that was something people do for some reason.
He got back in his car and I paid him, then just as he was about to drive off, I asked him to give me the stuff. He of course replied that he already had, and I found it on the wall. But he and his girlfriend both laughed derisively as they turned the key and sped from my life.
It was humiliating.
And I will never be that cool again.
Or so I thought…
Now in most walks of life, right or wrong don’t really exist, and almost all interactions with the world involve various shades of gray. However. Surely one thing we can all get together on is that 50p is too much to pay for photocopying a single piece of paper?
And what’s worse. I would have had to take out a ten pound note to pay for it, and the only machine near me charges you £2. So that’s £2.50 for photocopying my passport. It was in this state of desperation and a righteous sense of entitlement that, I too, turned to crime.
It’s bank holiday Monday, and the school I work at is closed. Empty. Quiet. And with a photocopier.
I casually walk up to the gates of the school. Damnit! Locked! I knew it couldn’t be that easy. But I won’t be beaten. There’s a particularly impatient receptionist in one wing of the building who can never be bothered to wait for people to buzz her in when she arrives. More often than not, she leaves one of the padlocks open, and gets in through one of the small side gates by using a stick to shift the sliding lock. I glance around me to make sure none of the windows in the houses opposite me have people in them. The coast is clear, and I slide open the lock. My intelligence gathering has paid off.
I enter the building and head cautiously to the photocopier, when I hear a sound. Footsteps, and the unmistakable first four bars of Paul Simon’s Call Me Al, hummed by a tone deaf man with a cold. It can only be the caretaker. Or Site Manager as he once shouted at me for not calling him. Actually site manager sounds more menacing anyway so let’s go with that.
I duck into the supply cupboard and wait for him to pass. As soon as I’m clear, I slip out of the corridor and make my way quickly to the photocopier.
But as I power up the machine, the grim realisation dawns on me. When the photocopier is powered on in the morning a code needs to be entered before it will work. A code I do not know.
I think back over my months at the school, frantically trying to remember the code. I fail. But I remember that same impatient receptionist once telling me that when she was deciding what the code should be, she simply put in the last three numbers of the schools phone number backwards, followed by her extension. Oh Carol, I knew befriending you would pay off in the long run.
I check through my phone book for the schools number. Of course, I don’t have it. I’m a criminal, what do you expect? But there are posters down in the main wing of the building which have the number on them. I continue my mission.
I spot the poster down the hallway. But in-between me and it is another caret-site manager. I thought I was done with these guys! His back is to me, and more importantly, to the poster, and he is sat on a chair which is unmistakably taken from the year 2 classrooms. I know this because it is purple, and he doesn’t fit in it. Why has he chosen to sit in a child’s chair when adult chairs are nearby? No Sandy! There’s no time for psychology right now!
As slowly, and quietly as possible, I creep into the room and peel the poster off the wall. Someone went to a great deal of effort to keep this poster up, using a full on overkill amount of blu-tack. Eight pieces. One for each corner, and one in the middle of each side. I can’t risk the noise it would make to pull it down in one go, so I carefully ease each individual piece from the wall using the classic pinch and roll method. Finally, the poster is mine, and I creep back into the photocopier room.
As I punch in the code, the machine lights up, and finally my mission is coming to a close. I reach for my passport from my left pocket.
“If you be my bodyguard…”
Damnit! Him again! Why won’t he stay where he’s supposed to! Where do I go? Nowhere to hide. This is it. I have no choice but to go into the corridor and confront him head on, hoping my bluntness will distract him from realising I was in the photocopy room, and the machine is turned on.
INTIMIDATING SITE MANAGER: Oh I didn’t know anyone was in today.
FEARLESS SANDY: I’m not really, Jess just asked me to come pick something up for her that she forgot on Friday. (There is no Jess)
SUSPICIOUS BUT POWERFUL SITE MANAGER: What was that?
MANLY AND STRONG SANDY: Just some resources for the SEN kids. (I don’t know what that stands for)
KUNG-FU SITE MANAGER: Jess doesn’t have any SEN kids does she? (Obviously there is a Jess, but I don’t know who she is)
CUNNING AND COOL UNDER PREASSURE SANDY: No… Honestly, on Friday she got me a birthday card and I left it here by accident. I mean, I know it’s not a big deal or anything but I didn’t want her to find it and think I was being ungrateful. I mean I only live 2 minutes down the road and I just remembered this morning.
MIGHTY BUT ULTIMATELY UNWORTHY ADVERSARY SITE MANAGER: Haha, alright then, be quick though.
I walk off in a random direction which I hope Jess’s room is in, and wait for him to leave the corridor, before running back over, sliding the passport out of my pocket and getting my copy. There’s no time for stealth any more. Get the job done and get it done quickly. I take my copy out of the machine and pick up a pink piece of paper from the side of the room and fold it into the shape of an envelope, placing my newly photocopied passport inside.
I walk down the hallway holding the “envelope” in my hand and hold it up as I walk past him, giving him a knowing grin as I exit the building.
Noooobody doeeees it betteeeeeerr.
Breakfast Epiphanies 