Armed this evening with a gigantic hacksaw fit with a 12" carbide grit rod, I venture west, ready to free the remains of my bicycle from the clutches of a broken Kyptonite lock at the corner of Dickens and Damen. It grows dark as I carve into the steel, reminiscing about the drunken strangers who tried to help me fix this problem nights earlier, breaking the lock further upon attempting to kick-jam it loose with the pole-end of my bike seat, running away after realizing what they'd done.
Twenty minutes into sawing, I reach a deep, deep point of weakness. It's taking a long time to cut through this steel, and besides, maybe I should just get a man with a strong arm to help me. As this regrettable thought fashioned out of time-related desperation scrolls across my brain, a man comes up and asks me what I'm doing. "I am stealing my bike," I say. Maybe, I think, this dude is good with a hacksaw.
After answering a series of his questions about Iowa, however, a state I have never been to, I realize with a full degree of certainty that this man is CraAaAaZy. I am relieved then not to have armed him. Do not, under any circumstances, give a crazy man on the street a hacksaw.
He starts to visit me in regular intervals as I saw.
"I'm proud of you," he says on a return visit to my side.
"Thanks," I say.
"Are you sure this will even work?" He sighs dramatically.
I make a final, furious cut, and the lock flies open.
"Wahoo!" I yell, the noise reverberating off the darkened buildings.
"Wahoo!" A guy riding past on his bicycle yells back.
"That's it?" The man watching says.
It takes me another ten minutes to realize, indeed, that I'm bleeding all over myself.
Em,
ReplyDeleteJust discovered your blog in the signature of your e-mail. You are a delightful writer!
Jane