Two months after graduating from law school in May, 1985, I had to take the bar exam. During late May and all of June and July, I studied seven days/week.
Because I was broke that summer, I worked at the local two-plex movie theater as the janitor, ticket-taker and usher. Each morning, I awoke at 6:00, ate breakfast, walked to the theater, swept and mopped the floors that had been stickified by spilled soda, ice cream and Jujubees, vacuumed the lobby, cleaned the sinks and toilets and gathered and carried the trash across the parking lot to the dumpster.
While I had my own key, one Friday night my boss told me he was changing the entrance lock and that he’d give me the new key the next day, Saturday, at noon before I cleaned in advance of the matinee. I showed up a few minutes early to wait for him.
There was a military recruitment storefront directly across the indoor, low echelon mall from the theater entrance. Bored as I waited for the boss that Saturday, I walked over to the stand with the recruiting brochures and viewed them at arm’s length. The recruiter, a dark crew-cut, sharp-featured man about three inches shorter than I and wearing a half-sleeved, chevron-decorated uniform rose from his desk and approached me in my paint-stained shorts and Clash t-shirt. Directly, but respectfully, he proffered, in that oddly pleasing military tone—they don’t repeatedly say “like,” or uptalk— “There are some good opportunities in the military, young man.”
My father had been in the Army. He said he got to play a lot of baseball in Louisiana, where he was stationed. Living in a different part of the US, playing sports, going on long runs while doing those call-and-response rhymes with the drill sergeant and shooting rifles sounded cool.
When I was 18, I figured that having been in the military would become a good job credential. I suggested to my father that I might enlist. He summarily discouraged me. I think he thought—even though Full Metal Jacket had not yet been made—I was like Matthew Modine’s “Rafter Man;” I wouldn’t buy, or fit into, military culture. He was probably right. So I went to college.
I was 27 on that key exchange Saturday and had done a lot of schoolwork since I was 18. I had, by then, fully invested in the white-collar thing. So I smiled and told the recruiter, “I’d be interested but I just graduated from law school and have a job that starts after Labor Day.”
The recruiter, who saw me leave the theater each morning, made a face indicating his belief that I was in deep, pathetic denial. But perhaps still redeemable.
“Oh, really? Law school?”
“Yeah, three years. I’m done. I just have to pass the bar exam.”
I could see him thinking “OK, law school graduate, I see you leaving the theater every morning with your sloppy clothes, carrying stuffed Hefty bags. And what are you doing dressed like this, hanging out in a nearly empty mall at 11:55 in the morning?” (Or, as they say in the military, 1155 hours. I knew this from watching McHale’s Navy on TV as a seven-year-old).
He did ask me why I was working there. I unhesitatingly responded, “I need the money, so I clean the theater. Normally, I let myself in but they just changed the locks and I’m waiting for the boss to show up with the new key.”
Yeah, a likely story. Continuing his cross-examination, he queried, “So, what kind of courses did you take in law school?”
I wished to myself that the bar exam questions would be this easy.
“Well…Property, Contracts, Torts, Legislation, Constitutional Law, Civil Procedure…”
Hi expression changed slightly. He looked like he was starting to believe me. But not completely. He seemed to think I was a facile liar.
I was hoping he’d ask me some substantive questions about what I’d learned in, for example, Constitutional Law. I was ready for whatever he could throw at me.
Instead, he asked, “Where are you going to work now that you’ve graduated from law school?” This time, he didn’t emphasize “law school.”
I had an immediate, specific answer for that one, too. Seemingly convinced, he gave up, shook my hand and wished me well.
The military would, for me, be another path not taken. I felt a small sense of loss. Many males in my family had been soldiers and I felt like a slacker. And doing obstacle courses and knocking other guys in the head with those big, padded sticks looked like fun. Though I guess getting knocked in the head wouldn’t have been.
—
After cleaning the theater each morning, I attended a three-hour prep class, came home, ate lunch, read the prep books for four hours, made note cards and returned to the theater to take (paper) tickets and usher. I spent a fraction of the night shift walking up and down the aisles with a flashlight. I spent the rest reviewing my note cards in the theater’s quiet, red-carpeted and very well-vacuumed lobby.
Watching snippets of the same movies for two weeks at a time, I noticed that, no matter which night, each audience laughed at the same intensity at each of the respective gags. For example, every audience giggled at Gags A, B and C. But Gag D, when a post-apocalyptic Thunderdome spectator handed Mad Max a chain saw that made his formidable cyborg cage-fighting foe turn and flee like a rabbit, always brought the house down. It got me the first time, too.
If it was a sad movie, you could hear women sighing or sobbing in the climactic scene. I shoulda brought a box of tissues and let viewers take one as I passed up and down the aisles.
I saw that a small sample delivered decent market research. But it was discomfiting to see that people were so predictable and manipulable. Thirty-five years later, the Scamdemic’s orchestrators would show that they knew the same thing.
I, too, saw this when, in mid-March, 2020, I emailed dozens of friends and family, told them that locking down was crazy and either heard back that I was wrong and selfish, or conspicuously got no response at all. I knew, from being an usher, that my random sample reflected broader sentiment. I was stunned and disheartened by peoples’ gullibility and passivity.
—
From Coronamania’s outset, I was certain the lockdowns and school closures were wrong and that the masks and tests were theater. Beyond my prior study of biology and human health, and basic intuition and logic, most days I read about the virus and the various forms of the overreaction. As during my law school study and bar exam prep, I built a comprehensive body of knowledge and was ready to share it.
If people had asked me about Coronamania, I could’ve told them plenty of stuff they weren’t hearing on TV or reading in the papers or online. I could have asked them many questions they hadn’t considered and answered any they had for me; we could have calmly taken turns.
It turned out that I had very little opportunity to discuss what I’d learned. I found that the Covophobic didn’t want to either present or answer any questions. They resolutely bought the implausible narrative that this was a universally perilous and unprecedentedly terrible virus and that, therefore, everyone had to hide from each other and, later, take shots to prevent mass death.
My attempts at dialogue with most people resembled my interaction with the military recruiter. Because I didn’t wear the proper attire: a white medical jacket, people thought I knew nothing. Even if I had been an MD, most would have said that I wasn’t the right kind of MD; that I wasn’t an “infectious disease expert.” Neither were Birx, Fauci or Collins. But no matter. They were on TV. And Trump called them “geniuses.” So case closed, despite the absence of cross-examination or other basic elements of due process.
As time passed, those who freaked out have predictably been shown to be wrong about all of it. Now, the Covophobic insist that they “couldn’t have known” the dreaded virus wasn’t that dangerous or that the viral control measures wouldn’t work and would cause much harm. But if they hadn’t closed their ears to those, like me, who tried to engage them in discussion, they would have known.
Worse, they had, for two or three years, acted as if they did know. And they weren’t nearly as courteous or willing to test their perceptions via dialogue as was the skeptical recruiter.
If it weren't for substack authors like you, Mark, and the many wonderful commenters here, I am not sure how I would be doing. Things were very bleak at the beginning of 2022, when I discovered Substack. The validation from knowing that there are others out there who also saw through the scam was necessary for those of us who value connection with other humans. There was no validation from the people I know in real life, so those connections were damaged or destroyed, quite suddenly and without much warning. As you said, you were stunned and disheartened. But being of a certain age, and having had prior experiences such as stealth menial labor, we are able to put some perspective onto it. Thanks for another great one, Mark.
It has been brutal. Thank you for this.
After the holidays I have more news of my heavily boosted family and friends' and, as expected, many more injuries (a turbo cancer, thrombocytopenia, various neurological issues, GI issues, and so on). Apart from one red-pilled family member, no dot-connecting. Still some mask-wearers!! No discussion other than an occasional, "thank goodness I had my vaccines or my [7th] covid would have been so much worse."
These first days of 2025 find me still working on getting my mind around a couple of conclusions and all that they imply. One is, while I may feel isolated, I know now that there are many like me who saw through the con from the beginning and we're not going to shut up and we're not going to go away. The second conclusion is, almost all of my family and long-time friends, well, they're just not who I thought they were, and I can't rescue them. They have to rescue themselves. And they apparently won't or can't do that.
About your janitorial attire: Funny, it reminds me of the lack of capital letters over at Bad Cattitude in that it turns a lot of people away, who don't know what they're missing.
My very best to you for 2025.