Humanizing and Dehumanizing

When I came home from my final meeting of the evening (Council of Youngins) I bumped into Mike. Mike and Frank live across the hall from me, and share with me a problem of bugs crawling into their garden apartment. They've recently moved to Fort Collins, I learned, from New Jersey (shore). I'd had no real reason to talk to them earlier. But our communal bug problem (and their desire to talk with me about it) lead to a pleasant conversation. Mike is a former corrections officer, who when asked what it's like replied, "can you sit on your ass for 8 hours." Frank used to build race cars, specifically alcohol burning drag racers. Apparently he built 8 second cars. I came to learn this meant that the car would traverse the 1/4 mile course in 8 seconds. It went from 0 to 176 in 8 seconds over the space of just 1/4 mile. Pretty badass stuff. I don't know a lot about cars, but I can fake it for a while, and now I know a little more. So that's good. The top fuel cars burn 7 gallons of alcohol in those 8 seconds (and the best cars top out at 6 seconds for 1/4 mile, or something approaching 300 miles per hour). All in all lots of pleasant conversation and learning about other people and their lives. Good stuff. Solid guys. The fairly unpleasant part came when I learned of Mike's views on being a corrections officer. He talked of the kind of prison he'd want to work in, namely one where the prisoners were allowed out so that they weren't behaving like caged animals. I thought, how progressive. Then I learned about, or had reinforced, the kind of approach officers take to prisoners. If there is a fight, "we take them to where there aren't any cameras and beat the shit out of them." It was soon after that comment that I announced I need to make dinner, and we parted company.