7.27.2008

Voyeur

This local story reminded me of something small, trivial, but, I suppose, worth sharing.

When I was between the ages of ten and fourteen, my bedroom looked out on the parking lot of a church across the street. Almost always parked in that parking lot: Two school buses, painted pale blue and decorated with smiley faces and crosses.

I had a habit when I was a kid (and still do, I suppose) of getting up and walking through the darkened house as if it were a new place, and I was exploring it. Back then, on several occasions, I saw a man sucking on a garden hose that had been dipped into the gas tank of one of the buses. He would siphon the fuel, and once he got it going, he would stick the garden hose directly into his own car's gas tank until he filled it up. Once or twice, I even caught him in that pivotal moment where his mouth filled with fuel and he had to spit it out.

I never once thought of calling the cops.

It was kind of a beautiful thing to watch, in the dark, as the man was lit only by the parking lot's flood lamps. He went about his business in a way that was almost poetic in its simplicity, and I liked being on my side of the window, where I could fumble around in the darkness and watch it all go down.

1 comment:

Christina said...

Holy crap, in our small little town? (excuse the pun)