Reflecting on a career I can't talk about...

Okay, I can talk about it, but I can't name names.

Or call the place I work for by name.

But the cartoon above tells you what I do for a living.

A hint: I'm the guy in blue.

Or I was once upon a time.

I have to tell you that God save me, if you knew me years ago you never would have guessed that a majority of my adult life would be spent locking the door and securing some of Tulsa's truly evil men. One of whole met his maker about five hours ago for beating a convienience store clerk to death in 1995. He and countless other have been watched over by yours truly.

The funny thing was, the job literally fell into my lap out of the blue clear. One day when a friend of mine was applying for what he thought was a bailiff's job with the Tulsa Ounty Sheriff's Office and the man who took his application and interviewed him took one look at me and offered me the job. Here I was, an unemployed former sheet metal shop worker and someone was offering me a job working in a jailhouse. A JAILHOUSE.

The very same jailhouse where, some 11 years earlier young Richard Lohman, festooned in a Cub Scout uniform,(don't laugh, it builds charecter), took a look around at the place and declared aloud that I would never there. Hey, I had a moon to walk on, and airplanes to fly. Oh, and if I were to become a police officer, I'd be dropping guys off at the jail and going out to fight more crime.

So it was with a weird sense of irony that I donned another uniform and completed one of my life's contradictions and took my first shift as a jailer. Was I scared? Too f*cking right I was. Imagine being told to make a catwalk around the 8th floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse in a narrow hallway that was maybe 4 feet wide with the outside wall of the building on one side and the cell tanks on the other.

My training consisted of: "Here's a key ring, use the one with the green tape on it. If you get confused, the inmates know the colors." Off I went. It was 11pm so the jail was quieting down but there were a few inmates still awake. I was "fresh meat", in the parlance of jailspeak but it really wasn't that bad. Got all the way round in about twenty minutes and went back to the control room with my heart in my throat.

I look back on those days now, twenty years later and see where this career has taken me. I don't trun keys anymore, I counsel the inmates now. The ones who were kids then are old men now, just like me. It is odd indeed to see the real badasses with grey hair and treating me not like the enemy, but a friend who is needing help getting his life restarted. Don't get me wrong, there are times when I truly HATE my job, especially given the environment that exisits where I work now, but sometimes you see rewards where you least expect it.

I am amazed though, that this career happened to me. I truly am.