I picked up a man today with a large solid case. I asked if he was a photographer as I thought the case was carrying camera equipment and he said, in a thick Tennessee drawl, that he was a security consultant. And he was on his way to a client. And this was his gear.
As if to explain the accent, he told me he had only lived here for six months and was originally from Nashville. But the company he worked for transferred him to be head of their west coast operations and so here he was. They gave him a house (a really nice one!), a vehicle (gas included), and an expense account. I was truly impressed. He was in his 30’s and did not have a tone of braggadocio but spoke with full sincerity.
He moved out here with his Norwegian wife who he had met in a Nashville bar six years ago. They were both divorced and hit it off. She was from a rich Norwegian family and he was just a southern boy. He couldn’t believe his luck. He said her first car was a Maserati and he told her he probably couldn’t match that and she was ok with that.
He really liked living here but had noted that the homeless were kind of an issue. Maybe that was because the population wasn’t that large to begin with and so they stuck out. His mom had been a drug addict and so he understood the plight of many of them. His new job had him visiting cities all across the west and he had enjoyed them all. I told them I had lived in the Bay Area and heard the homeless problem had gotten pretty tragic out there. He said he definitely felt the presence but no worse than other cities he had been to. He felt that maybe it had been exaggerated. You could turn the wrong way down a street in any city and find yourself neck deep in transients.
This brought him back to his mom. He said he didn’t have a great family life. He now had four kids and a wife who was a step away from Norwegian royalty but he grew up in a very troubled home. His wife was very family oriented and had talked about wanting to go back home to be closer to family. And he was ok with that. He had visited Norway on a number of occasions and loved her family and would go with her, no problem.
But, in the meantime, his job was security. He said he used to make bombs but his conscience got the best of him and he had issue making weapons of destruction. And this took him to the current crisis in the Middle East. And I was definitely interested in hearing his thoughts.
He was against the killing of innocents. On any side. He felt it was the leaders that put all the innocents in the crosshairs. And they should be the ones who have to shoot it out face to face and not make the women and children serve as human targets. Hamas’ actions were unforgivable and they should pay. Doesn’t mean that a whole city should be razed to the ground. The Israeli government knew that they were putting their citizens in danger and pulled back defenses to leave them even more vulnerable.
He was very passionate about this. Too many victims as the scapegoats for leaders. It’s why he quit his previous lucrative job of bomb making. He felt he was making weapons for the leaders and there were too many innocents who were caught in their blasts.
He talked about how each major news agency paints their side with no room for grey. Fox News fully supports the Israeli side and their “all Muslims are terrorists” rhetoric while CNN just shows the Palestinian victims with no talk of the Hamas criminals who kidnapped, raped, and beheaded Jews.
His wife was a counselor and felt a lot for people and he hated that she was always watching the news, flipping back and forth between channels, being affected with what she was seeing. They tried to watch more neutral news such as BBC and they got a feed from Norway, but the Norwegian news was much more graphic in their coverage than anything in the US, and which was always censored to some point.
He was quiet for a moment and then went on to say his next assignment was going to be in Reno. He had never been and so he was excited and he was going solo. Most of his travels he had gone with family including San Francisco and Las Vegas. He was looking forward to checking out Lake Tahoe. The one thing he missed from Tennessee was nature’s green. It always made him feel at peace. When he was in the Bay Area, they drove down to look at the Redwoods and he was in awe of the big trees. He said that Norway had a lot of unspoiled natural beauty even for the half the year it was freezing.
Yeah, he told me, if the wife wanted to move back to be closer to her loving family, he would have no problem with that. Being with a loving family in a natural wonderland away from tragedy and dying innocents… he would have no problem with that.
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