Our church relies extensively on volunteerism, for everything from ecclesiastical leadership to sweeping the floors. One of those areas is building security. We regularly have multiple congregations using the building most nights of the week, and they tend to focus on their activities, not on securing the building when they’re done. Therefore we need someone to come in after everyone else has left and check to make sure everything is secure.
This week is my week. Every night around 10:00 pm or so I get to go through the entire building and make sure all the lights are out, all the windows shut and locked, there’s no water running in the bathrooms or kitchen, and the doors are locked. Now, I don’t consider myself afraid of the dark, but there is something about dark, empty buildings that I don’t know for a fact are empty that puts me on edge. At the same time, I do feel silly turning on all the lights in the place just to reduce my anxiety–because I’m not afraid of the dark, you see.
So I usually compromise. I’ll turn on the lights in the hallways, but not the lights in each room I check. But it still leaves openings for imagination. As a general rule I find imagination to be a good thing. This is the exception to the rule. In each room I need to cross in low light to the window, check the latch, and then head back to the hallway. This leaves at least two dark corners unexamined until I’m already far from the door. Now, I know there’s nothing there. But my imagination doesn’t. It views it as its job to create things in those corners. Stupid imagination.
Well, and stupid Hollywood, too. The monster is always hiding in the last corner the actor checks. In fact, movies tell us that if there’s a person, alone, checking dark rooms, and is too stupid to turn on all the lights, they’re as good as dead.
But so far this time I’m finding it less anxiety-inducing than previous buildings I’ve secured. Some very thoughtful friends gave us, among other things, a set of LED flashlights of varying sizes and including a head-light. Also, for this building the “Lockup Keys” come attached to a heavy chain set into a thick wooden handle, making it essentially a small mace. These are keys built to instill confidence. Between the head-light and the keys I can see clearly in every room, check window latches with one hand, and still have one hand free to go for the Four Church-Keys of the Apocalypse. As an added bonus, anyone hiding in a dark room to jump me is going to get LED high-beams right in the dilated eyes. Whether it’s my fight or flight impulse that wins out, I’d say I’ve got better than average odds of survival.
Still, you never know. If I fail to post one of the days this week you might want to round up a bunch of young, attractive men and women with tragic character flaws to come look for me–and get murdered one by one in poetically just ways.
I knew it was a bad idea to teach our cub scouts to use knives…
So with you on this! I’ll never forget the night I forgot to lock up, woke up at 2:00am remembering. Went over to the church, checking doors and actually found someone sleeping on the concrete outside the doors on the far side of the building. My heart rate was well off the chart.