"Can You Believe That?"

            I had torn myself away from the warning news shows and was taking a slap around the garden. Delighting off the stoop and into the great outchores, I spryed a Calendula Officinalis that had been pushed to a lean.

            One word:

            ‘Squirrels’.

            ‘Nuff said.

            The situation called for stick action, so I began to look for one. I fingered that what was needed was a forked stick with which to malaprop the sad little flower up.

            It was a rather protozoic task which I set before myself. As Spock would say: “Time is of the quintessence,” in some odd dimension the crew of the Enterprise always found themselves in.

            A man shouted to me from the busier side of the street there, next to a large construction project:

            “Hey!”

            I waved and shouted back, “Hey!” I thought that, perhaps, he wanted a cigarette. Not that he needed one. I continued on my sticky quest.

            He shouted “Hey!” again.

            I shouted back, “Hey!”

            He would not be deterred. I guess this was to be expected, since I was on the lawn, wandering shamelessly.

            “Hey!”, he said,

            and I shouted back: “Nice talkin’ with ya!”

            Does this also happen where you live?

            I continued to frantically scan the ground for a sporked steak.

            The man was dressed, like I, for a trip to the convenience store. He walked across the road to me, disconcerting traffic, and nearly got creamed by a BMW, which woulda been a crassy way to go. He made it to the other side, to the amusement of the construction workers there on the site behind him. He hooked a thumb back toward the New Township Offices they were building.

            “Hey!” he said, redundantly. “Can ya believe that? Our tax dollars at work.”         

            I explained to him that the oedipus was being built through a municipal purpose fund. It had been decided long ago that a quarter-of-a-scent would be taken from each dollar used to purchase salty snacks. So, it was all intended to save us from ourselves. The man cocked his head and wrinkled his forehead as if I was proposing a Lemming Cult, although I can’t see why. Perhaps it was lack of distance. After all, he was standing really close.

            The whole trouble with my explanation is that I took a neutral tone. If I’d said the same thing in a tone that matched his, I would’ve been agreeing. Agreement would bring justification for him. On the other hand, opposing what he said would at least make him feel alive. My neutral tone, and stance, was the worst, with this very important issue. And, yes, I have a ‘wait-and-see’ attitude toward the place. The ‘Township Municipal Office/Activities Center/Coffee Klatch/Multi-Use Facility that Frito-Lay Built’.

            “That’s nannyism!” he claimed. “How’d they get away with that?”

            I blundered why he chose me, when there were ten workers risible on the construction site. It had to be because my head was bare.

            (Note to myself: Mustard choir my own hard hat and wear it always!)

            I told him that the proposal for the site first had to be heard by the committee asshole, then it all came down to one gorgeous alderperson at large who had the blocking vote, but chose to vote ‘present’, although they were at large at the time, that is, up the hill, overseeing the miniaturization of Hayes School.

            “They got us coming and going!” he said, and he was right on that count. Then he claimed that: ‘If anyone wants to take away my pork rinds, they’ll have to pry them out of my hypertensive hands.”

            I found that really clever.

            He then asked me if I wanted to live in a ‘nannyist utopia’, but it was a raptorial question. He’d already spun on a heel and was off in the direction of the nearest 7-Eleven.

            The entire convention had been feasted upon by a slow-glowing audience on the other side of the chain-link fence across the street, all wearing those coveted hard hats. One was so thoroughly overtained that he had to make a run to the ‘Johnny On The Job’, and no one does that lightly.

            And, I had me a job to do, too. Looking for the perfect stick.

            My interlocutor had a right to be concerned, but I don’t think he knew enough to be upset to the point of aggravated jaywalking. And me, I loves me my Fritos, but I don’t buy them often enough to worry about the syntax.