The Sidewalk

© DA Kentner

I watch people from my window. They walk along the barren sidewalk avoiding the cracks in concrete poured horizontally over a curved planet. These pinnacles of mixed sand, rock, and water, seem as icebergs floating in a sea of dirt and weeds. A bent and frail old man stumbles over one and tumbles to the ground tearing the knee of his brown trousers and breaking the cane he bought at Goodwill for a dollar. He doesn't really need the cane, but people open doors for him when he carries it. He isn't really ‘bent and frail' either. He lives next door on the other side of my house and he's one of the most obnoxious people I have ever met. He sits on his porch every Halloween just so he can tell all the costumed kiddies how he never got candy when he was young and they don't need any either. Of course he leaves out the part that he lived on a farm ten miles out of the city and never went trick-or-treating because he didn't want to make the journey into town even though his mother was willing to drive him into town. He is as lazy now as he was then. But it's my daydream and today he is a bent and frail old man who sits on his porch with a bowl of quarters every Sunday morning offering them to the clean little boys and girls on their way to Sunday School, ensuring they each have money for the church offering. Cursing, he retrieves a piece of scrap paper from his torn pink shirt pocket, but can't locate a pen. At least I think it used to be pink. Maybe it used to be red, then disguised itself as pink before the sweat stains set in to turn it all egg white. Or maybe it was white and he washed it with his red underwear. Stupid man. Everyone knows you shouldn't mix whites and colors together in a washing machine. Maybe he didn't. Maybe he only took a load of whites to the Laundromat. You know how people abuse those machines. Some moron probably tie-dyed a t-shirt red and didn't rinse out the machine, and then this old man who can't afford new eyeglasses, I know that because his have little hand-torn strips of duct tape holding them together, innocently put his clothes in that machine and all of his white clothes are now pink. Some people are just idiots! He should have complained. But the manager probably wouldn't have done anything about it. The manager is undoubtedly some middle-aged obese woman who doesn't use deodorant and keeps swatting back her curly hair that droops down over her right eye because she hasn't seen a beautician in months because she can't afford it as she works in this dead-end job for an owner who is too darn cheap to give her a decent wage when she is there six days a week working her butt off in a building that stinks of bleach and laundry detergent that he sells in little packages from vending machines that always break down and spill the contents over the floor that never gets clean enough because of the machines that overflow from the lazy customers who refuse to measure their detergent and sit and watch the machines spew bubbles all over the place and they won't even get out of their chairs to call the manager over because they are too irritated from having to walk in water that splashes over their new shoes that they got for Easter as that is the only time they get new shoes because Grandma is still alive and insists they wear new shoes to church and so that's the one time of year they take her out shopping with them and then have lunch at the buffet that costs too much but Grandma's paying for it so who really cares and they tell everybody how they spent the day with ‘Grandma' like it was a big heartfelt gesture on their part when they didn't want to but Grandma was willing to pay for the gas so they took her out for the day and then never called her to tell her they didn't go to church because they were going to the Laundromat but they would wear their new shoes there and think of her kindness when they knew they wouldn't because they needed to get little Billy's shirt dyed red for gym class because the sporting goods store was out of red t-shirts and Billy wouldn't be allowed to participate in gym class if he didn't have the proper uniform which consists of a red t-shirt over blue shorts which came from a garage sale but they didn't have any red t-shirts and God knows nobody can stay a member of the PTA when their child has failed gym class so they had to go to the department store and buy a white t-shirt and a box of red dye but since she lost a contact lens she couldn't read the package to know how much dye to use so she dumped the whole damn box in the washing machine that broke down just before the rinse cycle and she had to wait there while the fat manager called the even fatter sweating owner who drove down to see for himself that the machine wasn't working just like the manager had told him over the phone and he stands there berating the manager for not handling it herself right in front of the woman demanding they get the machine fixed because Billy needs his red t-shirt tomorrow or she will have to quit the PTA and then all of the school will boycott the Laundromat which will cause the manager to lose her job and move to Minneapolis and live with her sister who always knew she wouldn't amount to much and tells her that in the Christmas card she writes every year that the manager hangs over the door to her office in the Laundromat so all of the customers will know she gets a Christmas card and that's the card that's still hanging there over the three of them while they argue about the washing machine and Billy's t-shirt that was being dyed in the washing machine that sits underneath the sign proclaiming that no dyeing of clothing is allowed in the Laundromat and the manager wants the customer to pay for the machine's repairs because the owner is screaming that if she doesn't get the money the manager will be out the door looking for a job that doesn't exist in Minneapolis and the customer can't afford to pay for the repairs because she has been giving money to her sister so she can get a divorce from her husband who they think is having an affair with a blond waitress at the coffee shop he never goes to as he really has been working a second job to surprise his wife with a Caribbean cruise for their twelfth wedding anniversary and the customer's husband believes she has been putting the money away in a savings account she doesn't have like he has been insisting on so they can get the sidewalk fixed in front of their house before some crotchety old man with duct taped eyeglasses trips over the broken concrete and sues them and he has to sell his 57' Chevy that's sitting in the backyard waiting for the parts that his buddy from work said he could get from an old Army pal who restores Fords and would be willing to trade extra parts to get the Chevy parts but since he won the office football pool and has been dating a new employee in the accounting department he never seems to have time to make the call to help out his friend who would really like to get the car out of the backyard before the neighbors complain to the Police again and it is towed to the Police impound lot where it will be sold at public auction where he will have to buy his own classic car back and have it towed to the backyard again where the neighbors will call the Police and I really hate that car sitting in their backyard.

“Hey!” I holler out the window. “You need a pen?”