We're Not a Threat
Mood
Nervous
So I decided to get back into blogging regularly again. While sitting and trying to think of something interesting that happened to me recently (nothing) or at least within the last few weeks (nothing) I decided to go back to nearly a month ago. Which was the last time something interesting went down.
During the first weekend of October my husband, my brother-in-law and myself headed downtown to check out the art museum. When you are married to an art major you normally find yourself in an art museum of some form on a distrubingly regular basis.
On that particular weekend I wasn't sure if I just hadn't walked the streets of Chicago in a long time or if the terror alert level got upped and I didn't know it. There were people from homeland security, cops and FBI agents everywhere. There wasn't a street corner we passed that didn't have someone official looking in the vicinity.
My husband (who is a photographer) stopped at one point on our way to the Art Institute to take a picture of a building that was reflecting another building in a really cool way.
Almost immediately a guy in a suit with some sort of tag on his lapel, though I didn't get a good look at it, was on us, my first thought was that he must be from some security detail, or maybe even homeland security. Homeland security's offices in chicago was only a few blocks away. He demanded that we tell him what he took a picture of, was it that building (he pointed), and why he took the picture, to which my husband guilessly replies, "Um...", "Uh-huh", and "Because it looks cool" respectively. I love him, but the boy is not that quick on the uptake sometimes.
The suit then looks at my husband (long hair, miss-matched clothes - we've only been married a year and I've already given up), my brother in law (dressed head to toe in black with a pagan symbol around his neck), and me (wearing quasi-professional clothes if you ignore the tennis shoes and the fact that I'm snapping gum).
Apparently we weren't a threat. So he ordered us to move along (like we were going to stick around in sixty degree weather) and left. Apparently we weren't terrorist material.
We also must look flat broke because after walking two and half miles in downtown chicago we didn't get hit up for money once. I'm not sure whether to be relieved or insulted.
My husband and bro-in-law were not convinced the guy was even legit. Which might also explain the cavalier replies. They just thought it was some random crazy guy getting upity for no reason. Though the last time I checked the crazies didn't wear suits with official looking tags clipped to their lapel.
By the way, I was not quite sure if the building we took a picture of was the building that the homeland security guy thought we were taking a picture of. The building he was pointing to was either the one on the right or further to the right then that. The one we took a picture of was pretty far away and wedged between two other buildings, and we only got a very small angle of it.
He seemed very busy and like he had more important things to do then talk to a bunch of twenty-somethings (which he probably did) so he left in too much of a hurry for us to know one way or the other. I'm not sure if he would have told us anything anyway, and might have preceived questions as threatening. Also, to let you know, the guy on the cell phone was not homeland security guy.
The camera itself was a pretty high quality camera, and I at least think it's intimidating. It was a Canon EOS 20D with a sticker price of roughly $1,000. It wasn't your run of the mill tourist camera. No, of course it wasn't ours! My husband signed it out at the college he goes to. We also took the picture from behind some trees in a little park area along the river. We didn't want to have to walk half a black out of our way to get a clear shot at the building. So, hey, maybe we were acting suspicious from an outsiders point of view. Even if the guy was some nut on security detail it was still a wake up call about the times we are now living in that you can't get from a news article or from a bert and ernie terror level rating.
Posted by Bitsy at 06:35 PM Comments
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