Getting ready for work. Wallet, smokes, Coca-Cola, granola bars in my pockets, keys. Glancing at the tv out of the corner of my eye, I thought I was looking at an ad for yet another moronic action movie with Mel Gibson or some other Hollywood clown. Planes flying into buildings. Drama, explosions, blood, and action! Oughta' entertain the slack-jawed masses and rake in the cash at the box office! Yawn...why did I even bother turning the tv on today? And the fifteen minute drive to work. The radio in my truck had been stolen a month before. Forgot to lock the door. I hoped whoever stole it got his ass beat by whoever he sold it to. The CD player had stopped working. And of all things, it was an Alpine. Those are supposed to be good. Not junk! Whatever... it came with the truck when I bought it. A beater with a heater. And a new clutch. So the receipt claimed. I believed it. Felt new. Started to engage with the pedal just above the floor.
The radio in the company van was exactly where I had left it on saturday evening. And I listened while I worked unloading boxes in an alley that reeked of urine and sun baked, overflowing dumpsters. The glinting bodies of green and blue flies buzzing. Like tiny, pretty pieces of colored glass. Landing only to rub their forelegs together and feast upon filth. And screw. But they can do that while they're flying...right? Yes, probably.
The boss and the boss's drunken idiot son got into a loud, profane shouting match about twenty yards away from me. I had no idea why they were fighting. And never did find out why, exactly. I pretended not to notice. Nose to the grindstone.
The fat, blonde, middle aged, sunburned red, crazy homeless bag lady strolled by with her cart. She was a regular here. Her uncombed hair resembled the profile of a disturbed bird about to take flight. She paused to join in the shouting match. Just for fun. I guess. Like how when one dog starts barking and other dogs join in and bark for no gawdamm reason. I remember the flab above her elbows jiggling as she gestured wildly. I could tell she was likely very good looking in her day. Before she found a loser boyfriend who got her into drugs so he could get up her skirt. Or when the bats started flying around in her bell-tower so that no one could stand her and she became a stink-beast. Same as her mother.
Later in the day as the facts of the events of 9-11 became clear to me, I was even happier I was out of the Navy and nearly four years past inactive reserve status. Hardly a chance I would be recalled and go back to floating around in a tin-can. Nope. They'd have to drag me.
After 9-11, lotsa' people volunteered for the armed forces though. Idiots. Acting like they're patriots. Only reason most of them enlisted was because they were too stupid to get a job anyways... just like me when I'd enlisted eleven years before.
ty day at Oak Harbor Freight Lines.
