Chapter2
I
almost made it the whole five days without the old man finding out about my
suspension. School didn’t have his pay by the minute flip phone number and we
didn’t have a home phone, but because of a downpour, he got sent home from a
roofing job and found me there instead of at school. This was Wednesday, the
last day of my suspension. By that part of the week he was pretty much broke so
he was only able to stay at the bar for a few beers and wasn’t soused yet. He
did have a plan though, with a fresh twelve pack of Keystone Lights that
he loaded in the fridge, because, ya know, besides getting shit faced, he was
worried about his figure.
Initially
he was mad about how I was scamming him, getting up in the morning and then
pretending to go to school. But his anger momentarily faded, and believe me him
not angry for even a moment is a victory, when I told him how I smacked that
fucking moron gorilla McManus upside his head with my English book and how I
accidently punched Mr. Pierson in the chin. Besides not being mad for a moment
an even rarer thing occurred, he may have actually been proud of me, not only
because I stood up for myself, but because I got a shot in at a teacher. But
that quickly faded when I made the mistake of telling him how McManus’s friends
got a hold of me and locked me up. This prompted him to want to show me how to
escape such a situation, but it was fucking stupid since there was no way to
recreate it with just one guy. Nevertheless, he had me lock him up with my arms
under his and my chest up against his back. Going through a recent growth spurt
not only was I pushing six feet, I was also getting kind of strong and he
wasn’t really able to break free of my hold. Sensing he was getting pissed I
loosened my grip and was immediately greeted by an elbow to the stomach.
All
cocky he said, “That’s how ya fucking do it. Got it?”
I
was really mad and clenching my teeth said, “Yeah, got it!”
He
looked at me for a long moment, maybe considering the need for further fucking
parenting. Maybe a headlock or a kick in the balls would be the right pedagogic
fucking strategy or maybe his tiny white fucking trash brain was on overload trying
to decide whether I really ‘got it’ or was being a smart ass. Life was tough
when the prism through which you saw the world was limited to your angry
resentments and a twelve pack of Keystone Lights.
Back in the early 2000's I published a monthly website called Buffalo Mudd that ripped off the satrical style of The Onion. Describing the site I would tell people it's The Onion of Buffalo. Well, over this past summer I got one of those fancy streaming music services and today was the day I boxed up and exiled some five hundred cd's to the basement, including a couple hundred disks I burned myself. Going through them I came across a CDR titled "Buffalo Mudd Backup." As far as I remembered Buffalo Mudd was only backed up with floppy disks. Yes, floppy disks, that's how long ago it was. And, as you might imagine, as excited as I was to see the disk I thought there was no way these files, which were more than a decade old would interface with my Blogger program. But after a little cutting and pasting I've managed to recreate a reasonable facsimile of the original, epistemological...Molly story. She was a little older and she was Molly O'Malley instead of Molly Shea, The piece in itself is really kind of stupid, but it's a charming make you smile kind of stupid. Or at least it was for me. I hope it is for you too.
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