Tales in Hot Pink is a semi-weekly column by our fearless leader. Like all management, he is not required to tell the truth, represent himself accurately, or trouble himself with reality in any way. And, in keeping with our corporate style, he is not bound by good taste or specific subject, so he may ramble wildly from topic to topic. As his employees, we encourage this, because the day is long and we are frequently bored.
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School Bus
I am fashionably late for work, stopped at a red light, when the boy's face appears in the window of the school bus in front of me. I look at him. He looks at me. He's twelve. Maybe thirteen. He has a freckled, ghostly white face and a bushy head of red curls. I can tell by his demeanor that he is unimpressed with me. Maybe because he's looking down on me, trapped behind the wheel of my cheap car, three cups of coffee short of a good mood, driving to a job I hate, while he's going to be spending the day playing with crayons. But I don't feel the need to impress him. I don't feel the need to impress anybody. At least not before eleven. Maybe that's why my book doesn't sell very well. In spite of that, he waves to me. I wave back, with very little enthusiasm. I have no desire to be his friend. I have no desire to be anybody's friend before eleven. If it were Friday, five o'clock, and I was driving home to sit on my ass and play video games all weekend, I'd probably juggle and do magic tricks for him. But it's not Friday at five. It's Monday at nine. Nine ten, to be exact. And there will be no juggling or magic tricks. At least not until I get to work, and I have to spend an entire day convincing people that I know what I'm doing. He takes a pensive moment to consider my wave. I, in turn, consider his. He sticks his tongue out at me. Not to be outdone, I stick my tongue out at him. He evaluates the situation. I wait patiently to see what comes next. He sticks his thumbs in his ears and wiggles his fingers. Because the light has turned green and we're in motion again, I opt for the safer one-handed finger-wiggling option, the one where your thumb touches the tip of your nose and you give a trumpet-like salute. I do this because I need at least one hand to drive. Since it's Monday morning, I should be using both hands at all times (one handed driving is for Friday at five), but the rules of engagement are clear. Not confronting an overt hostile action is like admitting defeat. He does the pig snout. I do a retard face. I'm not PC on Monday morning. Friday at five, I would refer to it as the mentally-challenged face, but Monday morning, it's the retard face. He does the fingers-in-the-sides-of-the-mouth assisted grin with tongue flip. The bastard is good. I'll give him that. But I'm not some runny nosed kid on a playground somewhere. I'm a thirty year old man. I will not allow some brat half my age steal my dignity. So I bug out my eyes, purse my lips, and make my nostrils flare wildly. I did that to one of my younger cousins once when he came over to visit. Ten years later, he still cries when he sees me. The redhead in the bus tries to figure out what to do next. I can see his tiny intellect firing on all cylinders, trying to find the appropriate response. He finally flips me the bird. I flip him two birds, risking losing control of the car and death to ensure that I'm not outdone. He flips me four birds, two back to back. I flip him eight birds, two, and then two, and then two, and then I decide to put an end to the madness. I stick my head out the window. Adrenaline enables me to steer with my knee. I do the hands at cheeks, flapping like gills, sucked in mouth, cross-eyed, lizard tongue flick monster face complete with sound effects from the movie Attack of The Fifty Foot Gila Monster. My animal cries echo loudly over the wind that blows my hair back and dries my eyeballs in their sockets. I'd never gotten such impressive volume before, and I feel a twinge of pride. Cars in the opposite lane slow down to watch in horror. The bus takes a right turn into the school parking lot. The redhead looks stunned, about to cry. He has undoubtedly never seen a human face so viciously contorted in his twelve short years of life, and the image will scar him for life. I retreat behind the wheel, turning my attention back to the road, satisfied with my victory. I wonder, off handedly, why I never got my teaching certification. I'm so good with kids.
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| A collection of more diseased madness below. Check
out a few, and then buy The Reluctant
Prophet. We won't tell
anyone what you spent your grocery money on. No one needs to
know. We can keep it just between us.
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