That time the orange cone was for me
Living life with a hacker mindset is mostly fabulous. It means I wrote macros at my entry level job to automate writing a boring weekly newsletter. It means I hacked a way to get rid of my daughter's monster fears. It means I found a secret parking space in downtown Seattle where I can always park for free and never get ticketed. All fabulous things.
At the same time, it's good to have the occasional reminder to be a rule follower. Case in point, the orange cone.
Picture it, a lovely summer morning in D.C. Pretty much the only time of day you actually want to be outside in the D.C. summer. I was headed into my White House internship, with a spring in my step. I was on the path to a career in cybersecurity that I had invested the previous 3 years in creating. Part-time school, food service jobs, nanny gigs, late nights in the computer lab, all in service of my dream to someday work at the NSA.
I got to the top of the Dupont Circle Metro station and glanced down into its dark chasm. For those who have been to this metro stop, you know. The escalator is steep and intimidating, all 188 ft of it. For those who don't know, imagine standing at the edge of a volcano but instead of being lit by magma, the caldera has an eerie, fluorescent glow, like a bad office. Lord of the Rings meets Office Space vibes.
But as this was my daily commute, I had gotten used to throwing myself down this chasm every morning. Except today was a bit different. As I approached the edge of the escalator, I saw a confusing sight. An orange traffic cone perched at the top of the escalator. Bright orange, as in warning, as in don't go here.
Now the dutiful citizen version of myself might have heeded the warning of an orange cone, but not the new hacker me. The hacker unleashed by my exploration of the cybersecurity world didn't follow rules, she bent rules. If I was analyzing a malware dll that loaded at an address that conflicted with a system library, I could be the boss of it, change its preferred loading address in the PE header, and load it where I wanted. Take that malicious dll.
So what did I do about the orange cone? I thought to myself "I'm a hacker, orange cones aren't for me, they're for regular people" and I charged ahead down the escalator, sidestepping the cone in the process.
Pleased with my deft move, I nearly jumped when I heard a shout come from above.
"M'am! M'am!"
As a 25 year old at the time, it took me a moment to understand that I qualified as a m'am. And it took me a moment to understand that the voice yelling at me was coming from person leaning over the edge of the railing above me. And it took me a moment to understand that that person was wearing a police officer's uniform.
"M'am! There's a fire in the tunnel!"
A whatnow? I processed this for a moment.
"M'am! There's a fire in the tunnel!"
This time it finally clicked. I did the mental math and calculated that I did not want to be in a subway tunnel with a fire. And even more importantly, it turned out the orange cone was for me. Or at least it was for me if I wanted to continue living.
So I did the cartoon character thing, and scrambled up the down elevator long enough to look ridiculous and long enough to finally reach the top. I thanked the police officer and briskly set off for the next closest metro station.
I think about this story a lot. When encountering an obstacle, I ask myself all the time, is this orange cone really for me? Do I really need to follow the rules here? What I've learned is that I need to trust myself to sidestep most of the orange cones in life. They're not for me. They're for people who aren't creative enough to find the workarounds. But at the same time, there can be bright lines, and consequences for not heeding the orange cones in life. Taking care of your health? That's an orange cone that is for you. Taking care of your family? That's an orange cone that is for you.
But more often than not, feel free to ignore that orange cone. As photographer Gina Milicia so aptly put it, "Take risks: if you win, you will be happy; if you lose, you will be wise."
