by Gene Cowan
Last night in Oakton, there was a big flap over Mr. Kelly's signs again. Mr. Kelly is Oakton's last true Irish immigrant, and when he came over from Dublin it was just to make a point. Almost everything he ever does, including going to the grocery store, is to make a point. Last week he made a scene down at the Giant food because, he said, these computers are going to take over the world. First the checkout lanes at Giant, next, the entire world, he yelled. Stacey, the checkout girl, insisted that the computers had been there since 1976, and no one has been taken prisoner yet.
Well, now he has put up another sign. He puts one up every year about this time, lamblasting the board of supervisors or the governor or the department of highways, or anyone who seems to be getting a little too big for their britches. He's telling off the President now. It takes us a while to realize what he's up to with the signs, because we drive by it so fast that we only get one line at a time. Steve drives by, and I read the line, then we write it down on a pad of paper that's in the car for that specific purpose. When we get home, we try to decipher it, because Mr. Kelly still knows nothing about grammar or spelling, even though it is English and he is from an English-Speaking country.
It took about 12 trips to the 7-Eleven to completely read the sign, which said:
I TOOK TOO SMALL CHILDRin TO THE ZOO LASt WEEK
AND THE ZOO Waz CLOZED BECUAS NANCY RAGEN AND RONIlD
RAGIN WAS THER BUT THEY WAZ so iMPORTINT THAT THAy GOT
THE HOLE ZOO TO thEM SLEFS. I YELLED THAT THEY SHUD PAY FOR
MY TRAIN RidE BECUS THEY WERE HOGING the hole ZOO BUT THE SECRIT
SERVIS TOLD ME TO SHUT UP.
Just to make a further point, the sign was painted with outrageous eyecatching borders in pink and green. There was also a board tacked on to the bottom that said, THIS SIGN IS 3 FEET CLOSER TO THE ROAD THEN THE LAST 1. Obviously, he had had some trouble with the zoning board, too.
We've often wondered why he doesn't just write a letter like everyone else, we just sort of assumed that he was too cheap to buy a stamp. It was just another point he wanted to make about the high price of a first-class stamp.
Some people may wonder why he bothered to move here from Dublin if he's so unhappy with the United States Government. His wife explained it to us once, saying that he didn't really hate this country, as a matter of fact he loved it with all his heart, and simply wanted to make the point that it was a free country where he could antagonize anyone he wanted to and get away with it.
When you try to get help at our local Bradlees, especially in the automotive department, you might as well try to lower haystacks off the boat deck of the Lusitania. All I wanted was a car radio from the stockroom. All it took was 2 hours of my valuable time, time I could have been spending saving the earth from terrible atmospheric disturbances or playing Trivial Pursuit with a beautiful girl who works at People's Drug (where I on occasion shop if she is running the register), or even sitting by the phone waiting for someone- anyone- to call me. Instead, the Bradlees Sales Associates (translate: Someone who is only associated minimally with sales) sits in the back room doing exactly what I should be doing. Well, I finally got my new stereo, which insurance was supposed to pay for. But the cash register jammed up and destroyed my receipt, and The Insurance Company would not pay after seeing the hand-written receipt. “Anyone can hand-write a receipt,” they said, “We want something printed up nicely by a cash register.” So, I went home and dragged out the old typewriter, loaded it up with a blue ribbon, and typed out a nice little receipt just for them. “This is more like it,” they said. Two weeks later, I received a check for $139 from them.
Pizza Hut was the scene of a slight altercation last evening here in Oakton. I was sitting around with a girl named Teri that Mark had fixed me up with (What a guy. Teri was about as interesting as the black wrought-iron thing that was outside the patio door, but then again, she was about 700 times more attractive), waiting for our pizza to come, when it happened. Suddenly, Stacey, the waitress, (Not the same girl that works at Giant…) tripped over a small child who was running around the restaurant, screaming and yelling. As she tripped, the pizza that she was carrying flew out of it's pan, spiraled through the air, and landed on top of a large woman who's hair looked as if it was made by the people who make Lee Press-on Nails. Teri started laughing uncontrollably, and I helped Stacey to her feet. The woman with the girlish bouffant hairdo simply cried as pieces of pepperoni flopped down onto her chest, which was proportionally as large as the rest of her, and stayed there.
Soon, the entire place was awash in laughter, and the poor woman slid under the table, displacing the booth as she did so, and stayed there until her husband calmed down enough to help her up and out of the restaurant. Teri was so unbelievably hysterical that I simply took her back to my place, intending, of course, to do what any honest male would have done, but instead, I loaded her back in the car and took her home.
A day at King's Dominion is about the most fun that any child in Oakton could dream of having. For parents, however, it is a nightmare that dwarfs even nuclear holocaust or electrocution on the third rail of Metro. My dad took us there last Sunday, and swore up and down that he would never, ever, ever even entertain the merest thought of ever returning, and don't you forget it. Parents seem to be goaded into things very easily by their children, especially when it comes to riding rides that parents were not meant to ride, such as The Grizzly or White Water Canyon.
At Kings Dominion, they are not satisfied until you are completely soaked. You can avoid riding the water rides, but if your son wants to ride Diamond Falls and you don't, you can just climb a little bridge which has a little sign which says “Observation Area.” As safe as it looks, this is the most dangerous place to stand in the whole park. Well, when that boat comes down the hill, the water splashes directly towards the curious onlookers at the observation area. You get wetter on the bridge than in the boat. And for this, you pay $15.95 to get in.
The prices are another thing entirely. You can buy a slice of institutional pizza (the pizza that they serve in schools which has entirely too much fake cheese, too much doughy crust and not anything else…) for only $2.01 (For some reason, the prices seem to be entirely arbitrary, with odd amounts of cents which still don't add up right even with tax tacked on...) and spend upwards of $18 playing Skee-Ball just to win a small little stuffed koala bear or lion which you could easily have bought back home at the People's Drug for a mere $2. I searched the gift shops for something interesting for Steve, and there were only two choices, really: a Lakers Jacket for $80 or a Butterfly knife that had a comb in it instead of a blade for $1.98. The choice was pretty obvious, and I got him the comb.
Nancy Miller decided to become a pharmacist the other day. Occasionally, I visit her down south in Annandale, which is, compared to Oakton, the equivalent of a visit to New York City or Los Angeles, without the crime. The Millers live down the street from all sorts of people, from Fawn Hall to Bob Shaaf, a man to whom mowing the lawn means another good chance to get drunk.
Nancy pulled out her medicine chest when she heard me cough, and before I knew it, I had taken some little pill which was in an old, beat up box in the back of the medicine cabinet. Unwisely, I then went with them to eat at Big Boy's. This was my first mistake. My second mistake was passing out on top of my Bacon Cheeseburger.
Soon, my head was so messed up that it took a few moments to catch up when I turned my head. Needless to say, I did not finish my burger.
Later that night, when the effects had worn off enough for me to drive home, I was only mildly surprised to see that all the lights were off at the house. I could not imagine that everyone was asleep on a Monday night at 10pm. It wasn't for a few minutes that I realised the power was out all over the neighborhood. We sat around in the dark, and I pulled out the candles and the flashlight. Naturally, since it was so dark, I couldn't sleep at all.
Finally, the power returned around midnight. We sat in the kitchen and basked in the restored air conditioning, until the big green transformer in the back of our house blew up with a satisfying boom. This is what one expects, I suppose, when one wants a perfect looking townhouse development with underground electric cables and silly looking green transformers so that there are no unsightly utility poles around.
This is the same townhouse development that gives me all sorts of grief about the color of my deck, which I stained redwood color, what I assumed was the natural color of a wooden deck. Until I got a notice in the mail that said that it was the wrong color and please repaint it right away and here is the color it is supposed to be. It's called Treebrooke grey, but I affectionately call it Treebrooke Puke Grey.
My roommate Steve had been searching for at least a month for a job. His lawn-mowing business had gone under, and he was in the throes of desperate financial trouble. He made a decision that just about made me pass out.
“I'm going into the Army,” he announced.
It has, of course, built from that one announcement. At first, he was going to be leaving in August. And he was going to be an engineer. An honorable skill, I thought, and one for which he had already had some schooling. A skill that could make him a lot of money when he got out. And he would probably be stationed here in the area. OK, I thought, I just might be able to live with it, although not comfortably.
Then, he decided he was going into the infantry. How this entered his mind, I had no idea. What would he gain from 2 years in the infantry? He'd have no marketable skills later on, and it made no sense.
Then, the bombshell dropped.
He signed the papers. 4 years in Airborne. Jumping out of planes. Doing gritty, nasty work with a bunch of gritty, nasty people who I was sure would hate his guts. I tried desperately to convince him otherwise.
“Go for 2 years, then you can re-up if you like it,” I said. No, his mind was made up. He treated everything I said as if I were only joking. But I was deathly serious. If he went, my entire life went with him. And, if truth be told, I didn't want to see him fail. I knew he could make it through Basic, but I wondered if he'd make it through as himself or as the automaton the Army wanted to make him. How would he change? Would I still like him nearly as much in 4 years?
I also worried about his attitude. I had heard all about the sort of person who is in Airborne. People who scored much much lower on the tests than Steve did. Will he be able to fit in? Or will he be getting beat up everyday? Part of me wants him to fail, to be kicked out, to get out on his own. But part of me also wants him to find what he is looking for. If he finds it, maybe he can tell me where it is, so I won't have to keep looking all over the place.
Meanwhile, who will I have for a friend?