well i'm not honored. i'm offended.

a cop rides his bicycle into the computer center, leans on our counter and begins to make polite smalltalk. this is anomalous. cops usually have nothing to do with the computer center. their time is better spent patrolling the dorms and the parking lots. we can call them, of course, and we bring lost valuables to them when the day is over. they reset the fire alarm after some juvenile hippie decides to amuse themselves at the expense of people trying to finish evaluations or write contracts. this is a good level of interaction.

he leans further over the counter and points to the old man who is always here, from the time we open until we close in the evening. you see that guy?

he asks me a few throwaway questions about his habits. and then, 'you ever see what he's looking at?'

alarm bells go off. students working in the computer center have one legal duty to perform, that of reporting people who are looking at kiddie porn. someone could light up a joint in here and we'd report that, of course, but no one does that. it's blatant. we needn't look out for it because if someone were to do something so nonsensical, they'd have already consented to being caught. people can look at kiddie porn, in theory, far more surreptitiously. i don't care if people look at porn in here. truth be told, i silently commend them for their audacity. but kiddie porn is different. not barely legal, but little babies. i remember a lecture in psychology class about pedophilia and the picture painted of its recidivism rate was not pretty. maybe in twenty years, that will sound as bad as saying homosexuality is immoral, but i was taught that sex without consent is rape, and children are not experienced enough to really give consent. hence, the idea of them as sex objects disturbs me, and not just a little.

so i think back to what i've seen in passing this man's computer screen. all i've ever seen is email. he always sits in the big pc lab, where anyone can easily look over anyone's shoulder. no one even looks at porn in there. so i answer honestly, relieved that he is not a danger to society or anything like that.

the cop looks dissatisfied. he tells me that the old man lives in a motor home parked in c lot. and in doing so, he makes his intentions clear. they want to kick this guy off campus. looking at kiddie porn would be a justifiable and inarguable reason to do so.

i don't like this old man, he annoys the shit out of me. however, i am not about to dig up dirt on him for no reason other than the evergreen cops' lack of anything better to do over the summer months. ratting someone out entails judging them and i don't want to be involved in that. i could demonstrate abuses of college property, as no non-students are supposed to use the computer center, but i don't. i may not like the guy, but that's no reason for him to be banned from campus.

the cop looks annoyed as he leaves, probably to go ticket my car again.

When I was seventeen, I did something silly. Well, ok - I did many silly things, but this was among the very silliest.

My friend's father was the head of the city's health department. He called me up one day and offered me a job for ten bucks an hour, and, being seventeen, I nearly leapt out of my underpants. Not only did it pay well, but it sounded like great fun. I would drive around the city with a cop and a "Tobacco Enforcement Officer" (don't laugh - it's true) walking into corner stores and attempting to buy cigarettes while generally looking underage. If they sold them to me, I brought the pack back to the car and the cop went to give them a warning. No fines, no lying about how old I was, no ethical dilemnas. And I got talk to men with guns. Yup, that was naive little me.

Or so I thought. When I returned to the car with my first pack, glowing victoriously and feeling important (next stop - FBI), I discovered that things weren't quite going to work out the way I had planned. The uniformed men jumped out of the car, patted me on the back, and proceeded to fine the poor kid at the cash $200. But he had such nice eyes.....oh....and he had this line of dirt under his nails, like he never had time to take a shower or even cared - it was charming. I sat back, alone in the car, consoling myself with the fact that he had probably killed hundreds of teeneagers by selling tobacco to them. Right? Who the fuck was I kidding??? For one thing, I smoked at the time, and therefore relied on the generosity and goodwill of many such people on a regular basis. They were not criminals. They were people who wanted to help me out, perhaps fellow smokers who harboured a secret comradery with everyone of their kind. I saw the look in their eyes, the little glint that said "I shouldn't do this, but us smokers have to stick together. Go get 'em kid!" This was not an "I enjoy killing small children" look. Not at all. If anything, they should be fining the tobacco companies.

I felt horrible. Especially after they left me in the car alone for twenty minutes while they bitched out this poor kid working the cash. He was probably younger than me. And he was going to lose his job. The job he ran to every day from school without even stopping to wash his hands.

From then on, every time someone sold to me, I would lean in just a little bit, push the bright red package back across the counter, and whisper "You don't want to sell these to me - trust me on this one. I'm a rat." They always thought I was joking at first. Crazy kids. And then a slow smile would spread across their face, like they had just run a red light and narrowly missed the car in the other lane that had swerved out of the way. I had given them something. I had taken it away and given it back. And they were always grateful. I even got to enjoy the frustrated look on the faces of the uniformed men when I returned empty-handed, time after time.

So I was a rat. There was no honor in it. The only pride I ever took in it was when I thought of how much money I sucked from those discipline-hungry assholes at the city health department. So it goes.