oh-possum
once, years ago, I was driving a light blue Suzuki Samurai down Belmont avenue heading west to the Kennedy expressway about midnight.
a possum ran into the road 4 cars ahead of me and froze there. some kind people got out their car's and started to herd the possum back to the curb/sidewalk area. they worked at this quite hard for a spell. 3 or 4 people moving as a unit to save this little pink tailed indigent creature totally misplaced onto Belmont and Racine one fine fall night. I was listening to a Sex Pistols tape I have had floating about since my brother was apt to purchase it when he was a freshman in high school. I still have the tape, but the Suzuki I unfortunately don't.
so, as this dance went on one of the men in the group decided he would throw his coat over the beast and try to get him. to-get-him. he did this first part rather well, trapped him on the first toss. after he covered the possum the people were now trying to herd a coat to the curb. this lively burgundy coat running in circles on Belmont Ave. sub mission might have been playing. I hope it was.
Cars by this point had started to pull around us and pass on the left side of the 2 lane road. the possum ran from under the burgundy coat in the direction we had all hoped he would not, just in time to meet the grill of a non-de-script american car. non-de-script as in I don't remember, but I did see the possum tumble in the air and then under the car. little flips and somersaults. summer salts. white wall tires and a ton of car, he died there, losing heat on the pavement.
his dancing partners threw their arms down in disgust like a mother who just watched her son spill grape juice on the carpet in the room reserved for "company". they looked disappointed, not only in the driver of the car that hit the possum, but in the possum itself. as if it had been complicit in this by being afraid of them. they looked as if they thought it was a stupid animal that might just have deserved what it got because it failed to yield to their ideas of what it should do. they got in their cars and left, not even moving the carcass to the curb. I realized then, they never intended to touch it, not ever that whole time.
the moral: if someone throws a coat over you, sit still. they have a plan you might not understand.
-jae.
a possum ran into the road 4 cars ahead of me and froze there. some kind people got out their car's and started to herd the possum back to the curb/sidewalk area. they worked at this quite hard for a spell. 3 or 4 people moving as a unit to save this little pink tailed indigent creature totally misplaced onto Belmont and Racine one fine fall night. I was listening to a Sex Pistols tape I have had floating about since my brother was apt to purchase it when he was a freshman in high school. I still have the tape, but the Suzuki I unfortunately don't.
so, as this dance went on one of the men in the group decided he would throw his coat over the beast and try to get him. to-get-him. he did this first part rather well, trapped him on the first toss. after he covered the possum the people were now trying to herd a coat to the curb. this lively burgundy coat running in circles on Belmont Ave. sub mission might have been playing. I hope it was.
Cars by this point had started to pull around us and pass on the left side of the 2 lane road. the possum ran from under the burgundy coat in the direction we had all hoped he would not, just in time to meet the grill of a non-de-script american car. non-de-script as in I don't remember, but I did see the possum tumble in the air and then under the car. little flips and somersaults. summer salts. white wall tires and a ton of car, he died there, losing heat on the pavement.
his dancing partners threw their arms down in disgust like a mother who just watched her son spill grape juice on the carpet in the room reserved for "company". they looked disappointed, not only in the driver of the car that hit the possum, but in the possum itself. as if it had been complicit in this by being afraid of them. they looked as if they thought it was a stupid animal that might just have deserved what it got because it failed to yield to their ideas of what it should do. they got in their cars and left, not even moving the carcass to the curb. I realized then, they never intended to touch it, not ever that whole time.
the moral: if someone throws a coat over you, sit still. they have a plan you might not understand.
-jae.