Best to avoid the story of Leston Lawrence, I thought, just sentenced to 30 months in jail for smuggling gold “pucks” out of the Royal Canadian Mint in his rectum. The Star is a family newspaper and I try not to write about our Down Theres. I stay up north, mostly.
What Lawrence, 35, did was painful and undignified, like so much of life really. And of course we’ll all look suspiciously at our gold wedding rings and wonder what they’ve been through.
I am fascinated by Lawrence’s behaviour on the security video the Mint kindly offered to the court. As he leaves, he goes through security, the kind we all see at airports.
He’s shameless. He enters backstage and moves quickly through the door-like metal detector without a moment of hesitation. The pulse induction system reveals an echo, a buzzer goes off and Lawrence then goes into a body pout, as if his employer is too cheap to buy a functional detector that won’t harass honest employees like him. Fine, he’s pretty mellow, but really, guys.
He’s beyond the second red line, but spins around and does a kind of dance of disgust. He raises his arms for the hand-held wand to be quickly drawn over his torso and limbs. The guard isn’t fast enough with the wand. Lawrence drops his arms.
Then he makes a great show of raising them again. He radiates impatience. He’s free. He gathers his shoes from the conveyor belt and he’s off with his filthy lucre.
The CBC reports that Lawrence set off the metal detectors “more than any other employee without a metal implant — 28 times between December 2014 and March 2015.” He was never caught at the scene, but only later when a bank teller became suspicious about his gold sales and job. His song-and-dance at security alarmed no one.
Some people are raised in a shame-based zone. He wasn’t. What is that like, especially since he was fined $190,000? Hey, he stole it fair and square.
When I set the buzzer off at the airport, I curse myself for having forgotten to take my watch off and explain and apologize to the guard. Then I thank him for having alerted me to my failure. I’m a sea of sorrys and thank yous.
Lawrence is male and performed the way he assumed an innocent male would: annoyed. Me, raised Scottish, but without religion, perform in the way I assume a guilty person would because, although innocent, I still feel guilty. Of something.
When a guard comes to check my train ticket, I have it and the receipt, have checked I’m on the right train and in the right seat, but I still fear arrest.
Very British Problems, a blog that became a book, has detailed the tiny horrors of living in Britain’s shame-based society, of which I am by nature a part. We are the people who have our boots and coats on as we wait by the door so as not to inconvenience the cabdriver.
We are the people who suspect the doctor may be preparing to saw off the wrong leg, but don’t ask about it before we sink into anesthesia because we can’t be quite that rude to the doctor, who is probably very busy.
When I pay cash, I always ask for a receipt lest I be accused of shoplifting a bacon and avocado sandwich.
The problem with people like us is that we place ourselves in the minds of the people dealing with us, and judge ourselves harshly. Later that night, we writhe, as P.G. Wodehouse wrote, “like a gaffed salmon on the pillow” for what we should have said. Now the person will forever think we’re rude.
This is why I rarely lose my temper. If I do, I invariably apologize, overdoing it to the point that the kind person who accepted the apology now really really wants me out of the shop.
What is it like then, to be a conman so shameless that he keeps Vaseline jelly and latex gloves in his locker, but still dares to do the dance of annoyance for his co-workers?
I keep hand cream in my office drawer, along with latex gloves for opening my dodgy mail. I take printer paper home for work but it’s letter-sized and heavy and there’s no way to conceal it. Nevertheless, I’m telling my editor here. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t.
The hallmark of the Trump administration is shamelessness, with too much evidence to list. But they even bypass performing Lawrence’s dance of annoyance. They are entitled, they are blithe.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson feels comfy taking a government job where he’ll deal with the oil industry he long worked in and he’ll accept $180 million in severance from Exxon.
Gold is thrown at Tillerson but he doesn’t do an elaborate show of innocence as he walks through the beeping metal detector left over from the Obama Administration. Why should he? He feels no shame, no guilt.
Guilt comes from within, imposed in childhood. I am embarrassed about being suffused with this old-fashioned emotion. I feel almost guilty about my guilt, though innocent.
hmallick@thestar.ca
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