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A Story -- Continuity Time

So there I was, with holiday traffic stacked up on my offramp. I had to make doodoo like hummingbirds fly. It would be like breathing.

Level with me, reader. You have had this feeling. You have known what to do. You have quietly excused yourself and fled, done a quickwalk to the bathroom, slammed the stall door and let go. And then? It was over. You pulled yourself back into shape and you returned to society.

But what happened? Were you listening? Were you there? Because it was awful. Damning. If anyone could have heard what happened in that stall in those minutes, you'd be jobless and friendless, or at the very least thoroughly laughed-at. People would Know. In the ensuing years you'd be less quick to smile, or to share an anecdote with people you intended to befriend.

You would wear that doodoo like a badge of shame.

This is what I faced, alone, in a room whose locked door gave no privacy, as the traffic stacked up at the offramp of my personal body.

I sat, and I steeled myself, and I said: Today, I am a traffic policeman. Today, I control access. At my signal, a few cars left the offramp, at a slow and deliberate pace. In slow motion, a bead of sweat ran from my forehead down to the tip of my nose, and then splashed on the tile floor beneath me. From somewhere, carried by the wind, I could hear the opening tom tom drums of "In the Air Tonight".*

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*This is the only fiction in this story.

Posted by FLOG at April 29, 2007 11:29 PM | TrackBack