6/3/11
I was greeted by my first surprise of the workday when I meandered out of the fast food joint for a cigarette while they were in the midst of a rush. I went to the blind spot over by the curb in the parking lot, free from all windows. They probably wouldn’t have cared that I was running outside for a puff, but as I said, they were busy, and I felt guilty about enjoying a peaceful moment of blackening my lungs as they were stuck running around trying to satisfy a relentless herd of indecisive, unsatisfiable, lard-thirsty humanimals.
Anyway, as I sat there puffing on my cancer stick, this car drives passed; a mother dressed all nice with her three children in the car with her. I smile. Too soon. She drives passed drive through and parks, car still running, back by the corral, where the dumpsters are. She gets out in a rush and looks around, this sneaky, suspicious, nervous look blossoming on her face that sent alarms off in my cranium. Whatever happens next might be interesting, I thought to myself, so I kept watching.
For some stupid reason I figured she was going to steal boxes out of one of the two cardboard-only dumpsters that are positioned right next to each other to the side of the corral, between the parking lot and the lot for the semi-trucks. Maybe she’s moving and needs the boxes. Maybe one of the kids whipped a rock at her car window, smashing the glass to miniscule, razor-edged shards and she needs to duct-tape cardboard over the frame so that the thigh-high sociopath doesn’t leap to his death on the freeway. Maybe she has a cardboard fetish and her bum boyfriend’s last home got all soggy during the rain a few days back and a misshapen, oversize spit-wad of a cave isn’t quite enough for her to get her rocks off. Whatever. Who knows. For whatever reason, that was my stupid theory: she wanted boxes. Why she would feel sneaky doing such a thing was beyond me, but that was the only thing I could imagine she was planning on doing.
That’s not what she did, of course.
Instead, she gets between the two dumpsters and wiggles her pants down passed her knees while simultaneously crouching down. She then proceeds to piddle a puddle on the parking lot concrete in fashionable, fire-hose fashion.
Her kids in the car, watching; cars lined up in drive-thru, certainly able to see; truckers in their trucks just behind her, eyes no doubt fixed on the full moon aimed in their direction. And she could have just as easily parked, went inside and used the damned bathroom. I just didn’t get it.
Strangely enough, my second surprise of the day also involved a woman’s super-duper pooper-pillows.
Just after nine o’clock, when the playroom in the restaurant always closes, I’m wiping down tables, hoping my act of cleaning the area will inspire the couple still lingering in there to grab their two toddlers, get their shit together and leave. For some reason, the mother (who, I might add, had a look and vibe about her that suggested she was once of sound mind and very attractive but had collapsed altogether under the stress and depression of premature parenthood and can now only find some transient solace in the very activity that got her into the damned mess in the first place) was intent on taking the kids into the playroom restroom and changing them into their pajamas before bringing them home.
I didn’t understand this at all. Especially since it required planning, unless she always kept a spare pair of jammies in her purse. But then again, women do appear to be able to fit a whole load of interesting things in their purses.
Regardless, as she bent over, the bottom of her yellow shirt lifted, the waist of her faded jeans descended, and between those lips of blue and yellow cloth pale mounds of pasty white flesh, like nipple-free breasts of the back-end, burst out from either side of the tightly-viced, poop-shooting schism. There they bathed in the florescent glow of the world beyond that oppressive, narrow limbo-land in which they had been imprisoned; that claustrophobic kingdom betwixt the flesh and the form-fitting hip-huggers. It wasn’t a shy two-cheek peek-a-boo, either; this was a bold, confident Hello. Like the Kool-Aid guy slamming through a wall and screaming “Oh yeah!” in a thunderous, reverberating, megaphone-like voice.
As I tried to pretend like I didn’t notice the full moon before me, I began thinking about those tattoos girls get on their lower back that everyone calls “tramp stamps” and how fitting it would be if plumbers began a trend of getting tattoos on their posteriors. Then I asked myself, What kind of tattoos might one get on one’s rumpus? An eyeball on each cheek? A spanking-suggestive hand-print of one’s significant other? Full-color jean ink all over the caboose, complete with tattooed pockets and Levi insignia so that someone might stare at their bear derriere unawares?
And then I began wondering what catchy name we might give for these tattoos. Plumber-bum bumper sticker, ass art, butt badge, gluteus graffiti, heinieglyph, ink-’round-the-stink? Asstoos? Tatooshies? Tats on the tuckus?
This kind of thing could really catch on, methinks.
Chronicles of a Madman. 