Gorilla masks and those who don't need 'em
Yesterday was fun! I had too many g&ts after poetry on wednesday and then got 3 hours of sleep before having to teach French, English, then work on computers all day.
Right now I don't have a car so I must take the bus each morning. Yesterday morning the bus was nearly full so I had to sit in the very back, you know that back bench? Well I sat right in the middle. I was between these two guys and one was talking about his love for jumping from bridges. He likes to jump from very high ones into water. Now I have no problem with this necessarily, but his ineloquent way of putting it was, "I love to fall, man." Imagine that said with a horribly faked southern drawl that comes only from the small towns south of Olympia and you'll get an idea of the horror.
So anyway, this guy is talking about this and then tells a story about the last time he did it. This buddy of his wanted to do it to so they went to this bridge where I-5 (the big interstate freeway) crosses a river, just south of Olympia. They walk out to the middle of the bridge and that's when his friend backs out. He's thinking of chickening himself so he tells his friend to push him. His friend refuses, understandably, and so this first kid tells his friend to shake his hand then just kinda let go. The friend agrees to this so they do it. On the way down, the kid forgets to tuck his head in and it nearly snaps his neck when he hits the water.
So he swims to shore where his girlfriend was waiting with the car. That's when 500 (I kid you not, he said 500) police cars show up to haul his ass to jail. They cops were going to get his friend too but both guys insisted that they had just been shaking hands, nothing more. Apparently there were many calls to the cops from cell phones on the freeway so they showed up quickly. So the guy got arrested.
I expected the story to end there but it didn't.
The guy then pulls out a copy of playboy and starts to make horribly lascivious comments about the women inside. Then he says, "Well, I'm happy to be out. Won't let ya have stuff like this inside." I assumed he meant prison, and I was right.
His buddies started asking him how much 'time' he'd done and he said about 2 years down at Green Hill. (Green Hill is a juvenile detention facility south of Olympia.) The first six months were for custodial assault, and the rest was for a hate crime.
The guys went silent. A hate crime? Yes. "You see this tat, man?" he asked. His buddy said no and everyone stared at it. Sure enough, dude's all about white power.
So I'm sitting on this bus with a hate-crime comitting, bridge jumping, tatooed skin-head while on no coffee and sleep dep. What a day!
Anyway, I gotta go to work. Just wanted to tell someone the story!
Love,
The houseplants
Right now I don't have a car so I must take the bus each morning. Yesterday morning the bus was nearly full so I had to sit in the very back, you know that back bench? Well I sat right in the middle. I was between these two guys and one was talking about his love for jumping from bridges. He likes to jump from very high ones into water. Now I have no problem with this necessarily, but his ineloquent way of putting it was, "I love to fall, man." Imagine that said with a horribly faked southern drawl that comes only from the small towns south of Olympia and you'll get an idea of the horror.
So anyway, this guy is talking about this and then tells a story about the last time he did it. This buddy of his wanted to do it to so they went to this bridge where I-5 (the big interstate freeway) crosses a river, just south of Olympia. They walk out to the middle of the bridge and that's when his friend backs out. He's thinking of chickening himself so he tells his friend to push him. His friend refuses, understandably, and so this first kid tells his friend to shake his hand then just kinda let go. The friend agrees to this so they do it. On the way down, the kid forgets to tuck his head in and it nearly snaps his neck when he hits the water.
So he swims to shore where his girlfriend was waiting with the car. That's when 500 (I kid you not, he said 500) police cars show up to haul his ass to jail. They cops were going to get his friend too but both guys insisted that they had just been shaking hands, nothing more. Apparently there were many calls to the cops from cell phones on the freeway so they showed up quickly. So the guy got arrested.
I expected the story to end there but it didn't.
The guy then pulls out a copy of playboy and starts to make horribly lascivious comments about the women inside. Then he says, "Well, I'm happy to be out. Won't let ya have stuff like this inside." I assumed he meant prison, and I was right.
His buddies started asking him how much 'time' he'd done and he said about 2 years down at Green Hill. (Green Hill is a juvenile detention facility south of Olympia.) The first six months were for custodial assault, and the rest was for a hate crime.
The guys went silent. A hate crime? Yes. "You see this tat, man?" he asked. His buddy said no and everyone stared at it. Sure enough, dude's all about white power.
So I'm sitting on this bus with a hate-crime comitting, bridge jumping, tatooed skin-head while on no coffee and sleep dep. What a day!
Anyway, I gotta go to work. Just wanted to tell someone the story!
Love,
The houseplants
