By Max Burbank
March
16, 2001
1.) The WTF is having a
‘Smackdown’ at the local arena, which shares a lobby with the commuter
rail station you use every day. Your train, which is scheduled to depart
about one half hour before the ‘Smackdown’ begins, is late. Consequently,
the lobby is very crowded. A thicknecked young man is making his way
slowly through the crowd. A Cell phone is pressed to the side of his
lightly sweating head. He keeps saying the word ‘Dude’ over and over.
"Dude, Dude, Dude, Dude" The crowd forces him to move so slowly
you can actually measure the pause between ‘Dudes’ which is remarkably
uniform. "Dude, One Mississippi, Two Mississippi ,Dude, One Mississippi,
Two Mississippi."
2.) The girls had the flu
for so long you were sure you weren’t going to catch it. You were proud,
proud you hadn’t gotten the damn hoax/racket flu shot. Then you caught
the flu. You take a few days off from work, but when the fever goes
away, you go back. Whenever you close your eyes, you feel like you’re
falling. No, no, it’s slower than falling, but faster than an elevator
going down. Sinking. It feels like you’re sinking.
3.) It was right around
the time they started putting Enya behind promo’s for ‘Friends’. Someone
out there thought of that. And they pitched the idea. And the idea went
over. And they got paid for it.
4.) Your Supervisor, who
has been standing in front of you for God knows how long, says, "What
are you doing?" And the way she says it indicates it’s not the
first time she’s said it since she started standing there. And the truth
is you were thinking about the dream you had last night. Where you were
in this dusty, small town library. And a glass case had a live Pygmy
Owl in it, like the ones they have in Arizona, the ones that live in
holes in Cactus. But in the dream it was tiny, about the size of a hummingbird,
and mostly head and wings, hardly any body at all. And in the case they’d
mounted an antique magnifying glass, and if you looked through it, you
saw into this segment of cactus where the owl had its nest. And in the
nest were chicks. Pygmy owl chicks no bigger than the tip of a Baby’s
finger. But you can’t really tell your Supervisor that. So you sit there
and she stands there and you stare at each other.
5.) They weren’t Waffles.
They were only like them.
6.) You laugh at a funny
commercial and say to your wife "Isn’t that kind of funny?"
and she says "We’ve seen it before" but you know you haven’t.
Maybe she’s seen it, but you haven’t. Then she says when you saw it
before you laughed and asked her if she didn’t think it was kind of
funny.
7.) She took the diaper
off herself. Just like that. She’s standing on the changing table looking
you right in the eye, naked from the waist down, holding one end of
a diaper full of crap.
8.) Suddenly all you want
on God’s green earth is a pair of bad ass black boots with sterling
silver stars on the toes. But wouldn’t you look like a jackass if you
had them? Oh, yes. You would look like one hell of a Jackass.
9.) You can put butter on
them if you want, and syrup. You can put powdered sugar or walnuts or
any damn thing. It doesn’t magically make them Waffles.
10. ) You’re thinking about
that guy with the corpses again, aren’t you? And how things just get
out of hand, how things kind of snowball. That’s the tendency of things,
right? To snowball? First it’s just one corpse out back and you know
you’re going to get to it, and its dead winter so what’s the big deal?
And then suddenly the cops are yelling at you and there are hundreds
of dead bodies all over the property. It’s like you blinked and there
are literally hundreds of dead bodies. And there’s just no good way
to explain it. You’re staring off into space and whatever you tell me
next, I know you were identifying with the corpse guy. And we both know
that’s not good.
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