Terrible? Sometimes.

Recently, I have been contemplating sawing my head off, and replacing it with the head of a mascot from a sports franchise or a big business corporation, or a cartoon puppet from a children's show so more people will like/believe me when  I'm apologizing for being a terrible person, sometimes.

I probably say the words, "I'm sorry ____" or "I apologize_____" at least 100 times a day.

Because I'm a terrible person who ate a box of locally made chocolate peanut butter candies in the shapes of apples + A Weekender sized bag of locally made BBQ potato chips. I bought them for the greatest/coolest person in the world, who is currently living in Washington this summer. I ate them because I was stoned and hungry at 4 in the morning, and there was nothing to eat in my aunt's house. I also got her a t-shirt and wrote her a letter. (I didn't eat it either of them— I wasn't that stoned) But I'm lazy and wasted too much time and too much money doing meaningless bullshit with people I kind of care about (okay not really), and now she's gone, and coming back home, and might not like me as much before she left because I'm a TERRIBLE PERSON who is unreliable piece of shit. Sometimes. It's a proven fact.

I'm the worst.

Multiply anything by zero and you get zero.

And I'm sorry for the times I was late in the past.  (#101)

And for eating all your peanut butter chocolates and BBQ chips. (#102)

And never sending them out in the package with your letter and t-shirt before you left. (#103)

And for driving by roadkill without even acknowledging its existence. (#104) 

And for not erasing best friends who only give a shit about themselves sooner. (#105)

And for not attemping to cure AIDS or cancer. (#106)

And for being a TERRIBLE PERSON sometimes. (#107)

I want to bake myself into a tray of cookies, which resemble nothing in particular so people that care about me will be able to hold me gently in their moist palms before tearing me apart with bleached mouths, and digesting me with alcohol stained stomachs. Afterwards, rinsing the parts of me, which got stuck in between teeth out with mouthwash. The last of my sugary shapelessness dissolving or being spit and sucked down a drain because I am a MOTHERFUCKING success. Self-proclaimed. BFA: Class of 2011. Smoking bowls at work in the cooler with a coworker who is a former crack addict; her sixteen year old daughter, our lookout.

I will enjoy baking in the oven. Watching the people I know talk in the kitchen. Not understanding words, nonplussed expression of boredom with occasional fits of laughter. I will enjoy it because at least this time, I don't have to awkwardly stare around the room at people and assault them with funny faces. I have nothing to say. Or no one to say anything to. Listening to the mechanical sound of convection humming from the oven as I turn a golden brown. It's comfortable. I guess.

Except for the plethora of frowns reflecting off the windows. And the melodramatic buzz of text messages broadcasting unhappiness throughout the room. 

I can make coffee, but I don't think that will improve the situation.

Fuck, I'm a horrible host, but I'm trying my best. Making eye contact. Smiling. Asking, "Is everyone is okay?" Mingling. And looking concerned.

But I don't clean. My room is filled with a random assortment of garbage, loose body hair, and boxes of shit that have yet to be unpacked. 

And with five people in here it's cramped.

I'm sorry, I am terrible person sometimes, but you'll have to adjust.

Because I really don't think I'm that bad.

I don't have cable.

I do have Netflix, an iPod + iPod boom box dock, and a N64 and some weed.

(I guess it's all relative.)

But please don't forget  me. 

Because everyone is a terrible person sometimes. 

I'm alright with that even though my fingers are hidden and crossed.

And I will try as hard as I can never to forget about any of you.

"Duuuuddde, she's so hot." "Like the hottest fucking girl in the valley!"

When I am at work or a party or out with friends and someone attractive walks by and/or chats with us for five minutes and walks away, I can guarantee that a friend or coworker or random person who I'm next to will blurt out the statement, "Yo, she's so fucking hot! I would love to be up inside of that. Tappin that ass." as he/she points down at his/her sexual organ and humps the air. Or something similar to that. Then he/she will turn to me, and ask me, "Duuuuuudddde, like isn't she like the hottest fucking girl in the valley?" I think an outside party is required to confirm this fact for the local historian in order for him/her to record and preserve in the file cabinet of county records for future generations to enjoy.

Usually, I will nod my head in agreement like an intellectual attending a lecture, which he/she does not understand, and will never comprehend. Or I will just walk away, because questions or compliments using the word, "hot" to describe someone who is physically beautiful are fucking stupid. They also make the speaker look fucking stupid. Which means that the person who was humping the air a few minutes ago is a fucking liar. Because he/she is never going to get laid. Because he/she will never walk up to the hottest girl in the valley, and say, "You are the hottest girl in the valley!" Which is why they are talking to me about it in a secluded corner or on a lonely bench or in the next room, outside her earshot.

FUCK THAT SHIT! 

Here are some synonyms for the word, "hot":

Seductive

Addictive

Voluptuous

Ravishing

Poisonous

Potent

Symmetrical

Attractive

Stunning

Picturesque

Magnificent

Enlightening

Heavenly

Radiant

Comely

Sublime

Alluring

Exquisite

Cute

Ideal

Intoxicating

Fascinating

Astonishing

Breathtaking 

Pretty

Viral

Wondrous

Beautiful

Feel free to add more.

30 minute lunch break

Today, I was on my lunch at work sitting on the bench smoking a cigarette. I saw Renee, a girl who works up front, carrying a broom and a dust pan. And Pat, a woman who is one of the night managers up front, following closely behind tapping a cigarette out of her green pack of Pall Malls. Pat lit the cigarette just as I was stubbing mine out on the ground, and then looked at Renee.

“We’re not supposed to smoke here because the higher-ups say it bothers the customers,” she says taking an extremely long drag, “which means we have to clean all these butts up.”

“Okaaaaaay.” Renee said rolling her eyes upwards along with her vocal tone.

I threw my butt in the broken black plastic flower pot which acted as our ashtray and garbage.

Pat abruptly turns, and walks towards the front sliding doors finishing her cigarette in three puffs before dropping it on the sidewalk.

I noticed a small brown bird hopping around near my feet eating the crumbs from a discarded poppy seed bagel, and shitting little white dots everywhere.  And it was unavoidable.

Renee dropped the white dustpan to the ground and started sweeping the brown butts and ash out of the cracks in the sidewalk into a pile. She turned her head and fixed her accusatory pupils on the white pack of cigarettes next to me.

“Are you the one whose doing this shit? Throwing them on the ground like a lazy motherfucker? Making me have to sweep your shit up?”

“Nah,” I said shaking my head back and forth before opening my pack, “all my filters are white. Those are brown, which means I’m not the perpetrator. SEE!”

I pointed down to a pile of 50 brown cigarette butts, none of which are white.

“Alright, we’ll keep up the good work.” she exclaimed with a wink.

I gave her a thumbs-up, and watched the pile gain mass with each sweep.

“The funny thing is you don’t even smoke. Yet, you have to clean up everyone else’s shit cause they’re too lazy to toss that shit into the ashtray, which is literally five feet away. Bastards! Hahahaha..haaaaaaaaa!” I said rocking back and forth on the broken bench whose peeling red paint exposed splotches of cheap wood. It made a clanging sound as the metal legs lifted up and slammed back down.

I started laughing after completing the sentence because it’s a nervous tick, which is probably really annoying to the people I am talking to, and most of the time, I don’t even realize that I’m doing it. But, she didn’t seem to notice:

“I know right! Those motherfuckers!” Renee exclaimed slamming her broom down in an impulsive act of sedition. “I mean I smoke weed here, but not cigs. And they got me cleaning up other people’s nasty ass butts and ash. I, mean, what the fuck right?”

I pulled another cigarette out of my pack and lit it.

“We should go on strike!”

“Yeah, Fuck this place!” she said throwing her right fist into the air.

She knelt down and brushed the pile into the dust pan.

“Do you know we are selling expired baby food right now? They told me to check the dates and when I did, they were all two weeks expired. When I told them, the regional manager said, ‘Ehhhhh…They’re vacuum sealed. I’m sure they’re still fine for a couple more days.’ Can you believe that? ‘a couple more days.’ I mean, we are talking about little FUCKIN babies here. It’s terrible!” The skin on her face scrunched together forming ridges and valleys. “I work here.”

In my head, I saw babies with puffed up cheeks and green tinted faces regurgitating globs of decomposing fruit purée.  Their soft pink lips were coated in thick jelly-like film of infected nutrition, which made them look rabid and pitiful at the same time.

“Yeah, I can believe that.” I said, exhaling unsurprised syllables through the streams of breath and smoke. “Because I work here too!”

“This week we have an ‘In-Store Special’ on the expensive imported ham. It’s $5.99/lb, and it’s usually $8.99/lb. Last week, I noticed the expensive imported ham was two weeks past its expiration date because it never sells since it taste the same as the regular imported ham, which is $5.99/lb. We have sold about 7lbs out of a 12lb block of the expensive out-of-date imported ham. I feel bad selling them that shit, but I still do it anyway. Half the population of Plains may have food poisoning. And it would be my fault.”

I laughed, “But the worse they could do is probably sue me, and it’s not like I have a shit ton of money— twenty cents above minimum wage + a dollar extra on Sunday. What’s the worst that could happen?”

I laughed.

(10 second silence)

“Anal rape in a prison shower.” She answered matter-of-factly.

"Shit." I laughed and snubbed out my cig on the ground. 

“You better not be fuckin up the sidewalk I just cleaned with your butt.”

I held the butt in between my thumb and index finger and shot it directly into the center of the broken flower pot.

"Michael 'Fuckin' Jordan!"

Renee dumps the dustpan full of ashes into the broken flower pot. It looked like a waterfall : the ash and the butts freely falling downward into the basin of empty 25 cent bags of potato chips, which created a misty cloud of ash that drifted sensuously out of the broken flower pot in all directions, coating the surrounding surfaces in a thin grey film.

Pat stuck her head out of the automatic sliding doors and screamed in the hoarse voice of a drill sergeant who has been chain smoking for the last 37 years as a way to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“RENEE, IT DOESN’T TAKE 15 MIN TO SWEEP UP A PILE OF CIGARETTE BUTTS!”

“Alright. I’ll be in, just give me a minute.”

“I’VE ALREADY GIVEN YOU 15! LET’S GO!”

Renee gathered her dust pan and clipped it to the shaft of her broom.

“Yo, at 9:45 we might smoke a bowl in produce you down?”

“Word, I’m pretty far ahead on my work, and should be able to close on time. So, yeah. Just get me before you go.”

“Okay. Cool.”

Renee slowly walked through the doors following Pat to register two and immediately scanned a bag of cat food for a sixty year old lady wearing bulky glasses and pink stretch pants.

For the last 10 minutes of my lunch, I envisioned hundreds of babies keeling over in their high chairs face first into bowls of spoiled fruits and vegetables.

I laughed, because maybe we aren’t so horrible. Maybe we play an integral part in the solution to the planet Earth’s overpopulation problem. Checks and Balances. But still everybody gets a paycheck every Friday, which makes the whole situation kind of fucked up.

I noticed the small brown bird again and it was shitting all over the area in front of the store and, for some reason, it felt like justice was being served in some small way.

a phenomena of plesiosaurs (for Ivan Marrinson)

Maybe Ivan Marrinson knew something they didn’t, as he sat with his feet in front of him buried in the sand.

Victor’s orange campus fest t-shirt from 2006 and cut-off jean shorts were balled up in a pile next to him, a notebook, a pen, and empty orange pill bottles. Ben’s white t-shirt and black slacks were next to that. And next to that was Eli’s purse which was overflowing with random bullshit.

It was 90 degrees.  They were melting: drips of sweat were coalescing into bigger drops until they formed salty tributaries that flooded the epidermic crevices of their bodies flowing down towards the earth’s core. DNA sizzled out of existence on the grains of hot sand. Some people might call it heat stroke. 

Ben and Victor collapsed on the sand in two solid thuds, which formed craters, as they clutched the left side of their chests in horror. Pretending to die on a beach. A mother stared at Ben and Victor in their boxers (Ben’s: Cotton in the shade of grey; Victor’s: faded blue Buffalo Bills boxers, thigh high) and was trying to decide whether she should have a talk with her thirteen year old daughter about vaginal intercourse and the ramifications of unprotected sex, or if she should tell us to put an actual bathing suit on because it’s a public place, and there are children around. But they were already half submerged in the lapping waves, swimming towards Eli. Out of shouting distance. Her head was a hairy buoy bobbing in the waves of the lake.    

Ivan Marrinson didn’t join them. He stayed on the shore, fully clothed in a brown band t-shirt and jeans nervously piling clumps of sand onto his exposed feet and patting the mounds flat with his palm. Distracting himself.

Ivan Marrinson does not swim in the lake. Ivan Marrinson has never swum in the lake, and doesn’t have any plans to do so in the near future. He told them it makes him uncomfortable: appendages disappearing in a green haze.

“You never know what’s next to you, or under you, or touching you, or tasting you. It just freaks me the fuck out.” he said passing around a joint the other night in his apartment.

And it’s not that unusual. People have been seeing strange figures in this lake ever since the 1600’s, when it was first explored. Large shadows under the waves.  Bulbous bodies. Scales. Four flippers. Long serpentine heads and necks, which make the creatures look like large reptilian swans.  

Some experts think they are plesiosaurs. Some experts think they are waves. Some experts think the creatures can use sonar. Some experts think plesiosaurs were not equipped with sonar. Some experts think the plesiosaurs were trapped in the lake after it lost its connection to the sea, then adapted to the various obstacles they encountered within their new environment, and are able to satiate themselves on the hordes of fish provided by the lake. Some experts think the extinction of plesiosaurs occurred during the end of the Cretaceous period, and no evidence exists to suggest that they survived.

Ivan Marrinson learned these facts ten years ago after moving here with his family from Oklahoma. 

But maybe plesiosaurs were not the root cause of Ivan Marrinson’s lake phobia.

Some people chose not to swim in the lake because of phosphorus pollution.

Which could lead to algae blooms.

Which could lead to decomposing clumps of algae wrapping its limbs around a human body—a bunch a limp arms covered in mucous hugging/strangling the outer layer of skin.

Plus it smells really bad too.

Plus you never know when a thunder storm will show up and fuck up a good time.

Ben, Eli, and Victor swam past the kids carelessly wading along in their yellow duck inner tubes. Past the teenagers gathered in a crowd playing chicken. Past the people with swim caps. Past the married middle-aged couple in a kayak. They were treading water, unable to touch the bottom. And they had plans to go farther out to a wooden structure jutting out of the lake. It looked like an upside down ice cream cone floating on the surface. Rotting away. They decided that it was too far and too disgusting, after all three of them were molested by slimy leaves of seaweed.

After his feet were sufficiently buried, Ivan Marrinson picked up the notebook and pen, and began to doodle:

First, he drew a cat sitting on a toilet reading the newspaper. And in a thought bubble the cat is thinking, “Shit happens.”

Next, he drew the sun setting behind the mountains—but he fucked up the geometry of the sun, and couldn’t get the sky mirrored on the top of the lake to look right, so he scribbled aggressive black lines of ink over the image.

Then, he drew a pot leaf on fire screaming in agony.

Finally, he drew three objects with long necks and flat heads that were silhouetted against the super orange light of the setting sun.

Ivan Marrinson’s mouth filled with and oozed blue ink as he gazed at the three shadows in astonishment. He was chewing on the pen when his eyes discovered the black shapes, and his teeth bit that piece of plastic in half out of shock. Blue drops stained the sand in front of his feet as mothers bustled children away to mini vans, and old men in polo shirts shot photos with pocket-sized digital cameras.

Ivan Marrinson was concerned about the safety of Ben, Eli, and Victor.

He called out their names. No response.

Ivan Marrinson thought about calling the fire department, but realized there would never be enough time. Nor would they believe him.

Ivan Marrinson unearthed his feet from their tombs by standing up and moving his legs forwards towards the precipice of liquid water flooding land below sea level.

Ivan Marrinson ran out into the water in a panic. His legs were knee deep and sinking deeper, but his head was still above water. He is screaming. He is also nervous that he is embarrassing himself.

Ivan Marrinson notices Ben, Eli, and Victor walking up the other side of the beach, and sprints out of the lake, tripping on rocks.

Ivan Marrinson is out of breath and slumps over with his hands on his saturated thighs.

“CONGRADULATIONS IVAN! You’re not scared of the lake anymore.” Ben said as he patted him on the back.

“WAY TO GO IVAN! You’re so heroic. A true inspiration. A role model for youths who are scared of swimming in lakes.” Victor said clapping.

“Aw, Ivan you did it. I’m so proud of you. Growing up right before our eyes” Eli said staring at him with a sympathetic/unsympathetic expression.

“Hey…Assholes…Shut the…Fuck up.” Ivan said between breaths.

He finally regained his spindly structure by standing kind of upright with his shoulders hunched forward.

“Please tell me you saw those things in the water. Those three shadows with elongated necks and flat heads?”

“No.” Victor responded.

“Na.” Ben replied.

“I was focused on the shore and trying to breathe the whole time.” answered Eli.

Later that night, Ivan Marrinson ran his hands through his blonde locks of hair, which made them stick upwards.

No one believed him. The whole event was dismissed as a hoax. A hallucination.

Ivan Marrinson will see those three silhouettes every day until his death: A Phenomena of Reptilian Swans nesting behind his eyes, starting a family.

Ivan Marrinson will never swim in the lake again.

Greasing the paw of something that is seven times smaller (It has a tiny brain)

Jim slides four 10 milligram tablets of Percocet into the left pocket of his khakis while his grandmother’s dog, a tan toy poodle, sits next to him on the carpet.

The poodle stares at Jim. Two inquisitive black eyes under a poof of fur make her aware of the outside world. And that makes her a witness.

The poodle racks her tiny brain: To bark or not to bark? That is the question. And she has the leverage.

Jim picks the dog up under her front paws and contemplates killing her. He can get her with one hand clasping her neck. A quick jerk and it would all be over. Afterwards, he can run to the pet store and buy a poodle that looks exactly the same. The old switch-a-roo. He’s seen it work a variety of times in his favorite tv sitcoms. But then he remembers that eventually the owners always decrypt the truth. Either the pet is a complete fuck up that shits everywhere and obliterates every expensive object in said person’s house/apartment. Or the perpetrator confesses to the crime. Shit hits the fan either way.

But there’s another option, which is the one he always chooses because this has happened a number of times  before.

Jim puts the dog in the middle of his lap. She carefully lowers her slender frame into the largest crease in his pants. Jim’s fingertips delicately massage the small gaps between the ribs before they steal a couple of the meat treats from the jar on the counter and offer it to her as a sign of peace. The poodle devours the meaty morsels. She shows her loyalty to silence by licking his fingers. Then the poodle jumps down and trots away confidently with her head held high because she got her cut of the pie and ate it. The grease is still stuck between her paws.

Used. Jim feels like a smear of shit on a wad of toilet paper waiting to be flushed. His friends and his family members will probably talk about all the potential being wasted as they repeat the word, “disappointment” over and over.

“Under the control of something seven times smaller than him. What a disappointment.”

Jim inhales two of the percs, so he can tolerate himself, and wipes the counter clean with his hand making sure that nothing is out of the ordinary. His grandmother will be back in a few minutes to talk with him about her childhood after she’s finished folding the laundry.

eavesdropping on customer conversations: #1

"Mom, look how tan I am."

"You're not really tan, just sunburned."

"Oh."

An Elederly Deli Customer Offers To Give Me Psychological Advice While Ordering A Half Pound of Cooked Ham

The other day, a short elderly lady with a cute, but very wrinkly face, asked me to slice her a half a pound of cooked ham.

"Any preference on how that is sliced?"

"Very thin."

I told her, "I'll do my best," looking straight into her blue eyes.

She smiled.

"If you don't, I tell you what the hell is wrong with you!"

 I cut each slice extra thick on purpose and moved it onto the scale.

She shook her head, pulled a pillow out of her purse, placed it on the counter of the deli case, and told me, in a reassuring voice, to "relax, lie down, and make yourself comfortable."

And I did.

She proceeded to inform me of all my chemical imbalances and psychological deficiencies, as I explained my past and present staring into the stained drop ceiling.

I got up, bagged her half pound of extra thick cooked ham, slapped the price sticker on it, handed her the bag, and she walked away, pissed, towards the bread aisle.

We really shared a moment together.

And I'll never forget it.

Honestly.

excerpt from unfinished novella: how have you been?

December 25

“What is sorrow? I thought. What is sorrow but old, worn-out joy?” – Jon Raymond

Excerpt from Moral Orel: Episode: “Maturity”

Orel: Well I tried not talking about my feelings, too.

Clay: Oh son, behaving like a grown up is many things. First and for most it means doing things that you hate doing.

Orel: Like what, pop?

Clay: Well like dealing with people who make you unhappy, being stressed about things you have no control over, working soul-numbing jobs.

Orel: Ooh

Clay: Then gradually as we endure these hardships and accept them as normal, that's when we finally earned the right to get drunk and be emotionally distant from our families.

 *

The coffee pot gurgled on the polished stone countertop as red kielbasa casings, mash potatoes, gravy, and grizzle were scraped off the floral china and dribble into the black plastic garbage bin with a plop.

            “Oh, the countertop is made out of recycled stone. I’m not sure what types of stone are in it, but it’s called ‘Chocolate Truffle.’” My Aunt Nancy said slowly annunciating each syllable like the TV personalities on the Home & Garden channel.

            My sister Jenn spun her head around, took a sip of pinot grigio, and responded, “Well it looks real schnazzy!”

            “It better after how much it cost!”

            The women in the kitchen burst into giggles and laughter as the assembly line of female hands scraped, washed, dried, and put away the dishes. The men sleepily drank their beers watched a repeat of the ’95 Rose Bowl game where Penn State beat Oregon; the last Penn State team to go undefeated. A traditional Swiderski Holliday dinner, well almost.

            For me, Holliday family dinners with the Swiderski clan always came at a price. I’m not talking about family feuds, shitty cooking, or an aunt or uncle who has one too many. No, the reason why I never liked these soirees is because I usually spend most of my time outside by myself. It’s not because I hate my family or because I’m anti-social. (Not to say that it hasn’t helped me avoid the occasional awkward small-talk conversation with an aunt, uncle or cousin. You know, the conversation where you’re giving the generic questions and responses because there’s no common ground, but you still feel obliged to speak because your family.) It’s because I have asthma and horrible allergies, the most annoying being my allergy to pets.

Whenever I am in a house that has an animal (more specifically, any mammal that is covered with hair or fur) in it, a horrible chain reaction starts to unfold. First, red blotchy hives start to show up on my face. Then, I start to wheeze. Next, the eyes start to water and become bloodshot, which is usually followed by a runny nose and a box of tissues. At this point, I usually have to take two hits off my Albuterol inhaler, flood my eyes with Naphcon, and ingest two pink pills of Benadryl. If I continue to stay submerged in the toxic atmosphere, the Albuterol inhaler becomes worthless and I have to take a full on nebulizer treatment to keep my lungs from closing up. It usually ends with me having to go home because I’m too sick. But, every now and then, it’ll end up with me spending a night in the hospital. (This happened to me a couple of times because I was too sick and too far away for my mom to take me home.)This condition caused me to spend the majority of Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners outside. If it was mild and dry, it wasn’t so bad. I credit it with helping me win the 2001 and 2002 Knights of Columbus Northeast Free Throw Championships due to the number of hours spent shooting at the basketball hoops that hung around whosever house we were at. What made me despise these get-togethers was the amount of miserable hours I spent outside huddled up trying to keep warm or dry in inclement weather. When I was younger, I wondered if I was the only kid who had to where long-johns to Christmas dinner or if there were other kids out there like me.

But not this year; I left the long-johns at home. The high pitched yelps of my Nana and Pop-Pop’s poodle were absent. All that could be heard was the constipated belches of the coffee maker bubbling along on the chocolate truffle countertop in the kitchen.

I got up from the lacquered kitchen table and stood on the outskirts of the living room as Kijana Carter exploded for an 83 yard touchdown run on Penn State’s first possession.

My dad took a sip of Coors Light and exclaimed to my Uncle Rick, “It’s sad that they can’t even come close to doing this anymore.”

“Well, they can on defense.”

“Sure, but on offense they’re putrid. This team scored 38 points in this one game. They can’t score 38 points in three or four games anymore. Peeyew!” he said with glee in his eyes as he looks at my uncle and pinches his nose.

“Well that boils down to a lot of things: coaching, recruiting, academics. But, they just can’t develop talent like they used to. I mean look at the team their playing next week, Florida…”

My Uncle Joe turned and made eye contact with me as the white foam clinged to his half grey half brown mustache. Small Talk.

“Matt! What’s going on buddy? Still frostbitten from being up in Vermont?”

“Hey, what’s up? Nah, I’m warming up thanks. How’s it going with you?”

He paused and took a sip of his black Stegmaier Winter Warmer before he responded.

“Good, good. Can’t complain. Your aunt just bought a new countertop, and of course I had to install it. Besides that, I’m just working on trying to finish the basement. How about yourself? You graduate this spring right?”

“Yeah, if all goes according to plan.”

I had not work on my senior project since I got home; I had five months left to get it done anyways.

“So what do you plan to do afterwards?”

“Um, I don’t know. Well, I’m not sure yet. I think I’m going to take a year off of school and then go for my masters. Right now, school is just getting real old.”

“Well, you got to do something. Your mom and dad can’t pay for everything. Plus, everyone has to work. It’s part of growing up.”

“Yep, yep.”

I was looking for a way out of this conversation when I noticed my grandfather. My Pop-Pop. He was sitting in a maroon wingback chair with his legs splayed out on the matching footstool. They looked like two fallen trees that were tired of standing. His light blue eyes sank into the back of his skull as he rested his chin in the palm of his right hand as he watched The Blue Band play “Fight on State” on the TV.

“Hey, um I’m going to go over and sit next to Pop-Pop. He looks like he can use some company.

“Yeah, I got to go take the trash out anyways before your aunt kills me.”

This was the first time I had seen my grandfather since what has become known in our family as, “The Incident.”

About two months ago, my Pop-Pop took his small French Poodle, Ginger outside so she could do her business, just the everyday routine. While Ginger was searching for the best patch of grass to piss on, my grandfather next door neighbor yelled over his fence, “Hey, those dogs are out.” Earlier in the day, two dogs, a Rottweiler and a German Sheppard, had escaped from a their pen; the owner of the dogs was on vacation, and his elderly mother was watching them.  Before my Pop-Pop could even process the statement, the German Sheppard had charged and got a hold of Ginger. It shook her back and forth like a teddy bear, but instead of soft white stuffing there was blood. He hurled himself onto the back of the dog, and started swinging with balled fists at the dog’s head. A few landed, but the pain wasn’t enough persuasion for the Sheppard to let go. The Sheppard started rolling around the ground like an alligator in a death roll as Ginger’s high pitched yelps of agony echoed off the bricks and blue vinyl siding into the street. The Sheppard’s spiked collar sliced my grandfather’s forearms causing them to bleed. Finally the Sheppard let go and ran off after the next door neighbor hopped the fence and smashed it in the back with a wooden stake that’s meant to hold up tomato plants. A small puddle of syrupy blood started to form under her mutilated body transforming her fur from white to pink to red. My Nana broke into tears after arriving at the crime scene; she was inside when what went down went down. He gathered the body his little baby, his Ginger and wrapped her up in a blanket. My Grandfather, with tears flooding down his face, drove frantically down the highway to the animal hospital, repeating, in a low murmur, the phrase, “I wish I had done more,” over and over and over again. The story made the front page of the local newspaper.

“How could he have done more?” I wondered as I walked over to him. He took his dog outside to go to the bathroom. He wasn’t expecting a German Sheppard to come bolting down the side of the yard, and attack his dog. It’s a freak accident. There was no time to prepare, just react. Plus, he’s an 84 year old man. He’s my grandfather. My Pop-Pop. He was the man who survived the streets of New York City, alone, homeless, and parentless when he was 10. He was the guy who punched a his commanding officer in the face while he was in the Navy, and hitchhiked 7858 miles back to Nanticoke so he could be with my Nana. He was the guy who took his grandson fishing multiple times every summer since he was 7. He didn’t take shit from nobody. He was one of the only people from my family who I actually admired. I admired him even when he blamed me for running over the bait bucket, or when he turned the boat 180 degrees around because I was catching fish and he wasn’t. I wanted to tell him, “You did all you could have done. Don’t beat yourself up over this cause you don’t deserve it.” And suffocate him with a hug.

I sat on the tan plastic fold out chair next to him as I contemplated telling him what I was thinking, something meaningful.

“Hey Pop-Pop. So have you been out golfing recently?”

Small Talk.