I Spy Friday Fragments

Friday Fragments are brief bouts of blogging flu in which I enumerate things that have happened these past few days - or weeks - that are too small to stretch into a full-blown blog. Mrs. 4444 over at Half Past Kissin Time is to blame for this. You should check her out. I mean that in a blogging kind of way.

I dedicate this week's fragments to spying.

- This morning, a child care dad dropped off his infant son. He gets a ride with one of his construction buddies in a white, nondescript, construction site sort of van. The same kind Buffalo Bill the serial killer in Silence of the Lambs lured his victims into.

Anyway, while the child care dad was busy downstairs talking to Corrine about child care stuff, I observed Bill the Driver press a finger to his nose, lean out of the window of the van, and blow snot all over the place. The van, his arm, my driveway. I even think hit a sparrow in flight.

He then wiped his finger on the door of the van, then checked his nostrils in the driver's side mirror.

It blows its nose with a tissue or it gets the hose again!

- At Borders in South Portland this week I was in the Reference section looking for books on the writing craft when I spied, over in the Romance section, a woman with her back to me. She was, um...full figured. And apparently having problems with the tag of her underpants because she reached behind, dug deep, and yanked that fucking thing out like she was weeding a garden.

How she didn't give herself a bleeding wedgie will be one of those universal questions that will stay with me forever. I will, however, use it in a novel.

Carla reached around and sunk her fleshy arm deep, up to the elbow, fishing, fishing, her fingers grasping at air. Until, at last, they fell upon the offending tag and with one Herculean heave, tore it free. She studied it for a moment, near to her nose the way a boy considers an ant before burning it with a match. She then promptly discarded it by placing it between the pages of I Was a Middle Aged Virgin

- We have two dogs. A pug and a border collie. Just the other night I was watching television and, from the hallway, I heard the pug grunting, as if he were lifting weights. A rhythmic sort of expression of air, short and ... well, obscene like. So I peeked around the corner and found the collie mounting the pug. They're both males.

And I swear to God himself, all I could say was "Oh! Sorry!"

- I drove into town recently and, as is the norm, began talking to myself. For miles. And then it suddenly dawned on me I was having a discussion with myself. I looked in the mirror and said "Are you talking to yourself?"

Now, that's just really psychotic on so many levels, isn't it? Talking to yourself, then catching yourself talking to yourself and then asking yourself if you're talking to yourself, as if it were unclear to you that you were indeed talking to yourself and needed to be reassured.

- Is there any person on earth filled with more self-importance than a construction crew flagger? They rule the universe don't they? Standing out there in their steel-toed boots, greasy jeans and Motley Crue wife-beater on. Holding a sign that has two sides: SLOW and STOP, nothing more apt at describing the speeds of their brain activity is there?

Anyway, I came upon a line of traffic and watched one such road nazi as he did his thing. Eventually, after oncoming traffic was bled through, our line was allowed to go. He flipped the sign and stepped out of the way. The guy first in line didn't move.

The flagger/parolee pointed his walkie talkie at the driver and gave him a "fuck ya waitin for, dumbass?!?!?" look that all construction flaggers are trained to perfect, but the driver didn't move.

The flagger - who moonlights on the midway of your local county fair - tapped the SLOW sign heavily with his hand and waved the driver forward. The driver still didn't move.

At this point, the flagger raises both hands and starts yelling. What he was saying I could not tell, but I'm sure it included Bitch and Pig Fucker.

At which point the driver of the vehicle poked his head out the window, spewed a colorful epithet of his own and pointed demonstrably down the road - at the two large construction vehicles heading our way.

The slacker ... er ... flagger backed off, to the side of the road, and waited for the trucks to barrel on by.

The driver then sped away, but not without first flipping the flagger off.

Maine. The Way Life Should Be.