About a week or two into a job with a security company, I accompanied the installation crew to a storefront that was being remodeled. Its new incarnation would be a medical marijuana dispensary. In the lobby, the interior wall containing the cashier’s window had been opened up at the top, and a workman was emptying sack after sack of something into the hollow spaces within the wall. I glanced at one of the empty bags: it was pea gravel. Overcome with curiosity, I asked him why he was doing that.
Without looking up, he said indifferently, “To stop bullets.”
