SIT DOWN I'd just walked into a subway car and found myself sort of frozen in the aisle, looking for a seat, when a snoozing drunk came to life and ordered me to sit down. While there were other people standing, he was clearly directing this command at me--like a dog sensing evil kind of thing. My normal m.o. is to brush I didn't that night. I asked him where I should sit. He looked at me with pity, then said, "Sit down." "Yes, sir," I said, giving him a mock salute. I figured I would just cruise out of the subway car through the door at the end, into the next car. But the door opened onto an operator compartment, where I found an engineer hunched over a newspaper. He looked up from his paper and yelled, "Get outta here, screwball!" I closed the door carefully and walked back into the subway car where the drunk was. Before I could grab a seat, he yelled across the car, "Sit down!" I folded down a seat reserved for the handicapped and yelled, "Is this good enough?" He closed his eyes, leaned back, and shook his head. I whipped out my book and tried to read, but there was a Polish double date sitting nearby. They were laughing and shouting in Polish, and I knew it was about me. By the time I got off the subway I'd turned twenty pages and had no idea what I'd read. º º º
º º º I swear to God, we were standing there on this beach getting ready to leave and this little fish, maybe ten inches long, ran almost...across the water from maybe twenty yards away. Like maybe a flying fish. It wasn't even a matter of jumping -- it was kind of swimming fast with almost all of it's body inches above the water. And it did not stop until it reached my foot on land where I was standing. And it was just looking up at me. So I did the only thing I coudl think I should be doing...just reached down, picked him up in my hand and said, "Hi there." And then tossed him back in. It was like this last plea to evolution from this little fish. We should have maybe taken him back to the city and set him up with a really small apartment. In the last few weeks I keep finding myself wondering about him and how he's doing. |
