The View From Scranton

So There

I could no longer bite my tongue. It was bloody. And it was, as they say, swole. Like some long hard con's biceps. Swole. So swole it opened my big mouth. Wide.

The pudge had been giving me shade long enough. Ten years in at UG Hell. Four packing boxes, and the last six feedling cans into a conveyor belt. Day in. Day out. Like some trained seal. And he thinks he's better than me.

I don't think so. In fact I know. I'm mandated to slog in this pit -- what's your excuse? I can see a down-at-the-heels reflex enlistment. I can see start-of-life working-your-way-through-school positioning. I can see end-of-the-life coasting. I cannot see every day all day for the prime time of your life. I just can't.

But pudge not only can, he does. And oh does he do it so much better than anyone else ever. Posed and poised he stands, three empty cans in each hand, a thrice-greatest match to his hollow head. Feedling and feedling and feedling a Lidditious machine. As if the whole mild world depended on it. As if he were the only one suited to the task. The thoughtless, thankless, ridiculous task of a thoughtless, thankless, ridiculous so-called man.

Like I said, he's been giving me shade, acting all uppity and over just because he's got time in. I've seen it in men who've time in -- in prison, time in in life, but not time in in a filthy nothing factory. Boast and brag and beam all you want, but back it up with something.

And don't shine your lite beam on me lest you wanna get beamed right back. Heavy. Full Full on. Full on spot in front of your pitiful place.

At 4:10 the gaggle adjourns to the outdoor alcove to smoke. The greasers and the hippies and the fogies and the unpleasant one of the two girls and me. And pudge. He's beaming his barren bask my way and finally I just let go:

Did your Mom once tell you that you were cool and hard or something? Huh? Well, she was wrong. Way wrong. You're warm and soft, like a muffin. A mealy-mouthed muffin. If I were you I'd move outta Mom's house and get a second opinion.

The alcove went still. Silent. Pudge, after all, has gotta be pushing forty. Fat, natch. Stupid, ditto. With the kinda stupid smirk you just wanna wipe right off his smug pudge of a face. There was no smirk now. The want was wielded and the wield did wound. And all that smug pudgery went leaking out into the ether like so much stale hot air.

Seconds later the silence was broken by a man who knows something about breaking silences: Damn. That's gotta hurt.

I hope it did hurt. Not because I'm such a bully, but because I'm not. This man had made many other men feel weak and inconsequential, when all along it was he who was weak and inconsequential. I gave as I saw. I gave as I saw fit. And if tomorrow he's back to his usually fake-ass, dumbass swagger, I hope it's with a tell-tale limp.

So there.

posted by John Hood. @ 10:47 PM