Gatekeeper

 I felt very embarrassed when I heard. Someone had made his way through the gauntlet of security that keeps the front gate of our school safe. My principal came around just after the kids had all gone inside with their teachers, asking me if I had seen a young man in a black hoodie. Since this describes a great many of our students and parents, I asked for clarification. She told me that this person had knocked on the door of our preschool class, and told the teacher there that he was "looking for his nephew." The same guy then showed up downstairs in the main classroom building, and when he ran into our fourth grade teacher, this fellow said he was "looking for my wife." This set off our internal text chain, and though we were shorthanded, our principal went out to see if she could track this mystery man down. 

I racked my brain to remember an unfamiliar face passing by. I had taken a third grade class downstairs for their breakfast, so there was a time when the front gate was not being watched. I kept sifting through the crowd that I had seen before I left. No one who didn't have a kid in tow. How did I miss that?

The rest of the day was spent doing bits and pieces, filling in where I could. And repairing, once again, the door to the playhouse on our playground. The doubt that I had about missing someone entering our campus with bad intent stayed with me, and when I opened the gate at the end of the day, there he was. 

Not only did he match the rough description I had been given, when he made eye contact with me, he started moving back down the front steps. "Can I help you?" I asked in my best public servant voice. 

"I'm looking for someone," he told me, moving back toward the curb. 

"Are you picking up a student?" Sometimes an uncle or a friend of the family is tasked with pickup duty without a real clue of where and what to do. "What grade?"

"I'm looking for an adult," he insisted while holding the bag he was carrying just a little closer.

"A teacher? Do you know what grade?" We kept moving back off of school grounds.

"I don't know that stuff," he was now back near the sidewalk as kids and parents streamed around him. 

"You don't know the name?"

He had now retreated back around the black Camaro convertible with vanity plates. He opened the driver's side door, tossed in the bag and got inside. 

I turned slightly to take down his license plate number. That got him back out of the car in a rush.

"What are you doing? Why are you harassing me?" He stepped forward, emboldened by his new ploy. "You're racially profiling me!"

I ducked the attempt to shame me for the color s my skin, and told him that I was making sure that all the kids were safe. That was my job. 

He took out his phone and pointed it at me, whether to record me or give the impression that he was doing so didn't make a difference to me, since at no time had he identified himself or the person to whom he was supposedly meeting. 

That's when my principal showed up. She had heard some of what had passed between me and this stranger so she went directly to, "What are you doing here?"

"I'm not talking to you!" he was now getting back into his car. He was trying to keep the strain of our interaction between himself and me. 

"I'm the principal here," said the proud black woman that is my boss. "We are trying to keep the kids safe. Are you here to pick someone up?"

At this point, he had the passenger side window open to keep the nominal dialogue going. "I paid for this car," he yelled apropos of nothing. And then he said to I can only assume me and my principal together, "I make more money than you!" 

Then he was gone. 

Inside, as she waited patiently on the police non-emergency number to answer, she scrolled through the day's security footage. She found him coming in the front gate just after eight thirty. Right about the time I was taking the third grade class downstairs. He was at the portables knocking while I was helping start the third grade day. When I came back upstairs, he headed downstairs to tell our fourth grade teacher that he was "looking for my wife." He left out the side door shortly after. 

I felt much better knowing that I hadn't missed this character while I had been there watching. The cameras caught him leaving, then he came back just before lunch and parked in front of the school where he stayed until dismissal. That's when we shared out little chat. My principal and I set about alerting our after school program lead and our head custodian of the incident, and eventually let the police know what had happened. They let us know to call if he came back. 

I remain vigilant.