What They Don't Show on Television
On television the CSIs are always so cool. The camera pans as they smoothly remove their sunglasses and squint down at their evidence. They are so cool. They are soooo fake.
In reality CSIs are much different. Oh, we probably have our cool moments, but for the most part, last night was a pretty good represenation of exactly how cool we're not. It was hot. I was sweating. I wasn't glowing. I wasn't perspiring. I was sweating. I was coughing. My nose was running. (It's not cool if you drip on a body.) I don't think I've ever seen a television CSI with a head cold. I have a new supervisor. The scene was complicated, so he came along to help. It's the first time we've ever worked together. We bonded over a tape measure.
A murder scene is diagrammed in order to present a two-dimensional version of the scene for the jury. I use a fancy laser for many of the measurements, but curtains, mirrors and furniture can get in the way, so many times I have to resort to the tried and true - the tape measure. The Home Depot special! Bright yellow!
In real life the CSI looks less like "tank tops and sunglasses" and more like Tim "Tool Time" Taylor from Home Improvement. My tape measure is getting a little old. The end was a bit torn around the two inch mark. It wouldn't roll all the way up any more, so for more than a year, I have just worked around that little quirk. I mean, really, why buy a new $30 tape measure just because the last two inches won't roll up? (I learned why last night!)
My new sergeant was holding one end of the tape measure while I stood on the far side of a room with the opposite end. We took our measurement and I informed him that he could "let 'er go!" And he did. And that sucker zoomed back at me like a freight train and disappeared completely into the yellow case. No problem. I could just pull it back out. Nope. Like a turtle sucked up in its shell, that tape measure wasn't coming out. (They don't have this problem on television. On television there are not ten people in an apartment waiting on the CSI to get finished.) Soooo . . . I yanked on that puppy.
And the end popped off. What the ***K! I stood there holding the last two inches of tape measure, while the rest of it hid like a turtle in a bright yellow case. Ladies & Gentlemen, that's when I started cussing. Fortunately my new sergeant is old-school and has no problem with supervising sailors.
He looked at it. Then he cussed. They just don't show this stuff on television! Gil Grissom has never, to the best of my knowledge, gotten into a verbal altercation with a tape measure! Why don't they show that? That's real! So then we got the bright idea to take the case apart so we could pull the end of the tape out. Sounded good in theory. We trotted to the truck in search of a screwdriver. Now keep in mind, once we close the door on the home and head for the truck, throngs of on-lookers and media are watching our every move. (It is annoying, but there is nothing we can do about it. Frankly, if they want to stand out for six hours in flip-flops and watch me walk back and forth to the truck, then so be it. These people clearly need more to do in their lives.) So we walked to the truck. And we searched for a screwdriver.
Believe it or not, a Ford Expedition can be completely filled with equipment and you still will not be able to find a scewdriver the right size. (But we entertained multitudes of people with our search.) That's when we discovered that my pocket knife would work. Wooo hoo! We were back in business. Maybe. Do you know what happens when you open the case on a tape measure? We didn't. The crowd found it quite amusing.
When the last screw is removed and you begin to lift up the case, the tape will unwind like a giant metal snake - loudly. You will try to clamp the case back down, but alas, the yellow snake will continue to unwind. It is hard to look professional while cussing a 30 foot long metal snake. Trying to get it back together is like trying to stuff the genie back in the bottle - fruitless, but again, it entertained the crowd. (I guess you might as well get some kind of show when you stand around in flip-flops for hours.) But it didn't stop there.
We are nothing if not determined, and since we couldn't find another tape measure in the truck, we were desperate. Well, desperate times call for desperate measures! Mindful of our audience, we trapped the bulk of the tape in the case and stomped back to the apartment. Inside, we painstakingly rolled that sucker back into the case. Instead of screwing the case shut, my sergeant held the case clamped tight in his bear-paw hands and we carefully finished the measurements we needed. After that, he set the tape measure on a table in the living room . . . where it waited like a cobra in basket. And that's where the Medical Examiner found it.
We were actually in another room when we heard it - the familiar racket of a yellow metal snake unwinding and the short bark of a very surprised man in glasses. It was funnier when he did it than when we did it. I noted that he managed to refrain from cussing up a blue streak though. Perhaps he's higher up the Evolutionary Ladder than we are, or maybe he just hasn't learned all the good words yet. Time on the streets will teach you all sorts of new languages. It's actually kind of a pity that it happened inside the apartment. The Flip-Flop Crowd would have loved it.
