Tale Tattlin’ Got Me Rattlin’

This is when I let you tell me what to write. Sure, there are some pleasantries that deserve anecdotal attention, but they can wait. I have what you’ve been looking for, it’s here in the words and absent from the walls. Wherever you’re reading this, that isn’t where you want to be. But this is where I want to be. Talking to you, once again. Thinking about you, once again. Wanting something more, something different, something I once had or may have again? Perhaps. For now, all I’m looking at is what I have either been given or created for myself, and it really is pretty good. I’m not in the mood to complain about mental or physical discomfort, so I won’t. This is the kind of jabber session that would warrant no title to make it a little cooler, because this piece definitely won’t be cool. In fact, it’ll probably be on the left portion of the spectrum equidistant between “throwaway” and “trash heap.” However, I’d rather it be a trash heap than be uninspired. And I like the potential of being, so I’ll try and get inspired despite my fatigue. Now, what do I have left to toss your way?

There was this kid who drank too much one night and was getting nauseous sitting in a room full of chatterwocky smokers and their whine-box girlfriends. So this guy got up from his sprawling pile of person that he had become in the corner of the couch and walked outside. He ran away from them when they called, so I heard, only to be told later by them from him that he did not want to be caught, because he was going home and he didn’t care how he got there. All he cared about was being away from the smoke-filled room and the whine-weasels.

He took off but was going the wrong way. So he finally slowed his pace and began to walk. Don’t be too concerned, he would find the way back to his car somehow. Without his glasses, he wasn’t sure what was upon him, but he sensed the humor. It was a large metallic sign being held by a giant wooden post, stuck deep into the earth. It read, “Slow Children At Play” and featured a gimpy child walking. The young man was so alarmed at the prospect of a neighborhood of “slow” children prancing about in all of their misfortune, combined with the fact that there existed a sign exhibiting as much, that he felt compelled to tear the post from the ground and take it as a souvenir. Luckily for him, the thick base had rotted, and it took near no work at all to twist it from the grassy knoll. It wanted to be removed, but just as the boy tore it loose, he looked at it closely and realized in his inebriation he had been “slow” to realize that it was a sign for drivers to drive slowly because children were playing! No way could it have meant that mentally afflicted kids were running around unsupervised in their activity! Oh well, too late now, he had to take it. So he carried that six-foot beast with the 150-pound trunk all the way back to his car, reclined the seat and stuck it in. Driving home the damp wood and bugs and mildew began to infect his car, and he was inhaling spores and becoming weary of the drive. While on the freeway, he came upon a car in the lane next to him traveling at a rate of around 45 miles per hour. He was adhering to the standard 65, worried about night watchmen looming, so he was able to look inside the brown vehicle to his left to see a woman with her hands on steering wheel and her head down in slumber. “Wow, she’s worse off than the guy with the rotting, infested six-foot sign in his car!” He drove on, and began to feel tired himself. PRESS ON, SIGN TRANSPORTER! The lanes all became his, and he became the lanes.

Swerving across the highway, the lights behind him emerged and the siren sounded. The shoulder had plenty of parking room, not like that was overly encouraging. Next to the shoulder existed a mountainside, which served as a border to the northbound freeway. On to the next gentleman caller for this guy’s girlfriend, because once the cop got him to blow numbers and got an eyeful of the post lying across his flattened passenger seat, he was all over. The officer knocked on the window and homeboy lowered it and licked his lips. “Yeah, I was going to ask you if you knew why I pulled you over, but I guess we’re past that now. What the hell is that,” he inquired, and pointed an accusatory finger at the sign. “That is… slow kids at play.” The boy looked past the full-armored man and saw the brown run-down car housing the passed out woman of the hour. She started in the fast lane, but was gradually making a pass at the three. The cop was watching, I was watching, and the slow kids were watching. The three lane became the two, and the two became one. Her shift across the entire freeway was quiet, but it lost its silence when she found herself in the shoulder in front of my friend and then crashed into the side of the mountain. Our friend managed to drive away from that near-debacle unscathed from the policeman or prison when the cop took off to check out the scene he had just witnessed. Without a breath to spare and with his heart slam-dammin’, he told my friends to be sure and have me tell you the problems that arise when you go around misinterpreting signs.

Bryan May
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