John F. King
I think about John F. King a lot. For two reasons:
- Why include the F in your name?? All I can think of is John F**King. Poor guy. Must have gotten made fun of a lot in school.
- It’s because I ride a lot of elevators.
Every time I go to the doctor, I get on an elevator.
I push my floor button, stand to the side, and make eye contact with John F. King.
Or rather, I make contact with his name.
If you didn’t know, John F. King is the Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner for the city of Atlanta.
And every single elevator in this city has a little paper slip with his name inside it, saying, “You are okay to ride this elevator.”
Mechanics and parts are up to date, tested and proven. It works fine, just fine enough for thousands of people to ride it for the next 365 days.
Part of me wants to look him up, to put a face to the name.
But the other part of me thinks that it would ruin this one-sided game we have. Where he’s this mysterious overlord walking through all the same buildings as me, just at different times.
He’s always a step ahead, or a step behind. We live in a twilight awareness of the opposite’s orbits, looking around every corner for the visible and invisible markers of each other’s presence.
Granted, I know he’s not the one actually doing all these inspections — there’s actual inspectors for that.
But his name follows me into every doctor appointment, every exam, every physical therapy session.
His name is an imaginary friend that I wink at in the elevators —
“Oh, John F. King, it’s you again.”
