humor

Pity Party Poetry

Would you say a pity party

Is exactly what you need?

Pity parties are always on,

Always around, you know.

Pity parties can be a damn good time

If you know when to flow

But also when to go.

Pity parties can be flashy,

Full of drama and tears and moans.

But pity parties can be quiet, too,

Self-contained, strangled, alone.

Pity parties are partly parties

Perhaps because they’re pretty?

But no, that’s wrong, they’re pity parties,

Not some dance-a-roo.

Although, who knows?

Some may be. Maybe some people dance.

Maybe they dance and pity around,

Like doing the Hokey-Pokey.

They put their common sense in,

They take the sadness out,

They keep the sadness with them then,

And that’s what it’s all about.

Right?

Imaginary Muse

What to do when my muse has fled?
Why, I could sit here on my bed
And I could then begin to dread
That she has forever left my head.

My muse is a fickle thing,
She doesn’t call, she doesn’t ring.
On a whim she’ll come and bring
Me an idea of car or king.

But then she leaves and I’m bereft,
My hands- with keyboard deft,
Almost willing to commit literary theft,
For without my muse, what have I left?

But then again, there is no muse,
It’s all a sham, it’s all a ruse,
‘O Mind, you’re cruel!’ I accuse,
‘To give me an idea, you refuse!’

And so it goes once in a while,
And thus these poems, so infantile,
Are born of frustration and denial
With a brain, just now infertile!

Wet-War

Clifford had drawn his gun. Things were bad if he’d reached that point: he hated drawing his gun unless it was absolutely necessary. Guns meant needing to aim. Guns could slip out of his grasp if he was distracted. The grenades attached to his belt were his most preferred weapon, but he’d run out of the lot of them. He knew he’d been hasty and he cursed himself for a fool. He should have known better than to waste the grenades all at once.

There was no going back now, however. Clifford crept down the alleyway he was in. There was a tall wooden fence on one side of him and red bricks belonging to the big building next to him on the other side. Approaching from the alleyway, he thought to himself, could be a good move or a bad one. Hopefully, the one he was hunting wouldn’t think to ambush him quietly from the rear. Clifford was sure his nemesis hadn’t seen him enter the alleyway in the first place, and so he believed that the possibility of being surprised wasn’t a probable one. This calmed him, and he held tightly onto his gun as he tried to make as little noise as possible.

This was the final showdown between him and his enemy. It had to be. The two of them had been fighting this war for years, and it had gotten the both of them in some serious trouble in their lives. They had agreed that this was the last fight they would have. Clifford fingered the scar on his lip and remembered how he’d gotten it the last time he’d come face to face in a struggle with the enemy. He hoped to avoid such injuries this time around. It wasn’t easy explaining to the authorities how he’d come by his scratches and bruises.

Suddenly, a wild yell split the still summer air. Clifford registered a shadow moving quickly towards him around the corner of the building. He burst out of the alleyway, and without pausing to aim carefully, squeezed the trigger on his gun. He felt, in the same instant, a grenade burst at his feet and he slipped and fell, still trying as hard as he could to keep the gun steady.

“Clifford! Jasper!” Another yell, the familiar sound of the authorities, broke through the fighters concentration. A woman, Authority herself, burst out of the red-brick house. She placed her hands on her hips and looked down her nose. “I told the both of you that today is NOT the day for one of your water wars! We have company for dinner, and I need you both inside, now.”

“Aw, but Mom!” Clifford whined. “We were just getting started!”

“If you were just getting started, why are there burst water-balloons all over the backyard?” His mother shot him a look that could have frozen stone. “Inside, I said. I mean it.”

Clifford looked at his nemesis, his brother Jasper, and sighed. “This isn’t over,” he muttered. Jasper grinned, good-natured, and answered “We could have kept going if you hadn’t wasted all your water balloons right at first – then Mom wouldn’t have noticed a thing.” With an evil gleam of humor in his eyes, he skipped into the house behind his mother.

Clifford shouldered his big water-gun [it had three tanks that could be loaded!] and followed Jasper into the house. At least, he thought, I didn’t fall and split my lip this time. Mom being mad is better than three stitches at the hospital.

Spam [Part II]

Part I

Ladonna had walked down several blocks at a very brisk pace before she stopped, shook herself both mentally and physically, and tried to pull herself together. It was weird, true. It was even extremely strange and unlikely. However, there was no reason to panic. In fact, quite the opposite: perhaps her lottery ticket would really be worth something.

Still, she was spooked. As she slowly made her way home, she shook another cigarette out of her pack and lit it. The smell and taste of smoke calmed her nerves, but only out of habit. She considered smoking as a sort of meditation. That argument had never worked on her friends who told her to quit smoking, but it sounded good anyway.

It was still early in the day, and Ladonna had the day off for her birthday. In the evening, she’d have a few friends over. They were all taking the train down to throw her a little bash. She was appreciative – she knew train tickets weren’t all that cheap and that the two hour train ride was a hassle for them. She comforted herself with the knowledge that she’d be taking the train over to them soon enough as well, and so she shouldn’t feel guilty. It was her birthday, after all. She was allowed to be indulged, at least a little.

Thinking of the evening, Ladonna’s mood improved as she walked along the streets back towards her apartment. She meant to cook up a good meal for her friends, and even bake a cake, and she wanted to get an early start on things. There would be alcohol, of course, and plenty of it. Her friends were planning on staying the whole night and get raucously drunk (though not really, because there were neighbors who wouldn’t appreciate that). Ladonna smiled to herself rather grimly as she envisioned the hangover that would follow and the too-familiar feeling of that odd and illogical peace that would settle in the house as she and her friends would drink cup after cup of coffee at her table and try to sober up. They had spent many nights and mornings together in this fashion.

Well, they’d all be nursing headaches and queasy stomachs together, at least. Oh, oops, Ladonna realized. All of us but one. Kate was pregnant, and wouldn’t be drinking. Damn, Ladonna thought, that means none of us will get as much drinking as we’d like done either because we’ll all feel she shouldn’t have to suffer us extremely drunk. She felt guilty immediately afterwards, and slammed the heel of her shoe down on her dwindling cigarette. She had reached her apartment.

As she was climbing the stairs, a man exited a door on the next landing. He had a dog with him, an obedient golden Labrador who sat quietly as he fumbled with his keys one handed. He seemed to be having difficulty getting the key into the lock. Ladonna then realized the type of leash he was holding – not a leash at all, but a harness. The dog was a seeing-eye dog, and the man must be blind. She stepped sideways on the staircase to allow him and the golden Lab to pass her, but the stairway was just too narrow and the man bumped into her just as his Lab sensed the danger of it and sat down to warn him to stop.

“Sorry, sorry!” the man hurriedly apologized. “My mind was elsewhere, didn’t hear there was anyone else here, I’m so sorry.” He gazed at her unseeing and smiled slightly, trying, she felt, to gauge her mood somehow.

“No, it’s no problem at all!” she mumbled shyly back, trying to edge around him. She hadn’t meant to distress him, and he seemed so worried.

“Say,” he began again. “Your voice is a new one. Are you new here or something?” Ladonna felt ashamed of herself again. Here was a new neighbor, a person that would be tromping up and down the stairs here just like her, and she was acting like a complete ninny, just trying to get away from him because she was nervous!

“Yeah, I am, actually.” She decided to do the thing properly, put a smile in her voice and kept on bravely. “My name’s Ladonna Trent, I just moved into the apartment right above you, sir, and I’m glad to make the acquaintance of a neighbor.” She then took his hand and firmly shook it.

He smiled widely. Ladonna noticed how sweet, open and friendly that smile was. This big man, wearing a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and black tennis shoes looked simply boyish, despite being very much over fifty years of age.

“Well then! Welcome to the building, Ladonna! My name’s Steve, Steve Solomon. This good girl here,” he gestured to the Lab, who was sitting quietly beside her master with her tongue hanging out, “she’s Anibal. Anibal Solomon, really, since you could say she’s like a daughter, helping her dad around and all.” He grinned widely again. “We’re going out to the corner store. Need any milk or anything?”

“N-no, thank you, sir.”

“Steve’s fine, Steve’s fine – we’re neighbors, after all! If you ever need a cup of sugar or something, just knock on my door. Anibal here will get me if I’ve got my headphones on. She’s good about noticing the door. Come on, girl!” With his command, the Lab started to walk slowly and carefully, her harness gripped firmly by Steve, and led him down the stairs and out into the street.

Ladonna stared after them until they had left the dimly lit interior of the building. When they were out of sight, she ran the rest of the way up until she reached her apartment. It took her three tries to get the key in the lock, and she felt a pang of sympathy for Steve, needing to fumble like this all the time. Finally she managed it, and wrenched the door open. Without bothering to take the keys out of the lock or close the door, she rushed to her computer.

The screen was writhing with strange snake-like pipes that were moving and growing and then collapsing on themselves. Impatiently, Ladonna jerked the mouse aside, stopping the screensaver from it’s endless patterns of pointless animation. She stared at the spam folder in her email. There were still five emails there, from five different supposed senders.

Ladonna Trent was her name, of course.

Ronda B. Clements had been her waitress.

Ricky Charles had been the sole survivor of a freak tractor accident that she had happened to catch in a convenience store on the shortest, silliest news report of the day.

And now, Anibal Solomon had just happened to be her downstairs neighbor’s seeing-eye golden Labrador.

This was turning out to be the strangest birthday Ladonna Trent had ever had, and that included the one where her older brothers had tried, and succeeded for a few hours, to convince her that aliens were attacking the earth because she had turned eight.

Spam [Part I]

Ladonna Trent sat staring at her computer screen, which was displaying the spam folder of her email account. There were five emails there. Four were advertising something called Rx Meds [At Your Fingertips Today!] and the other one was advertising fake watches. The emails were from a variety of names: Anibal Solomon, Rubin J. Keith, Ronda B. Clements and Ricky Charles.

The rather odd thing was that the last sender of one of the emails advertising Rx Meds seemed to be from herself. The name Ladonna Trent was neatly listed next to the subject of the email. Ladonna stared at the email a while longer, wondering what the odds of THAT happening were. She decided the odds were some big number to one. How odd that it should also happen today, of all days, her birthday.

Ladonna abruptly abandoned her computer, grabbed her coat, keys and cigarettes and dashed out the door, only remembering when she got to the end of the hallway that she should probably lock the door, especially as she actually remembered her keys this time. The door made a satisfying click when she locked it and Ladonna wondered how just a small, round, metal bar could lock a door so thoroughly. As she walked down the stairs of the building, for the elevator was broken yet again, she continued to marvel at the incident of the spam email. Why would a woman with her exact name be sending out advertisements? Actually, the advertisements probably weren’t sent by actual people, but just by some company’s computer, and the names were probably just generated randomly. Still, it was strange to see your own name advertising something like illegal medications.

As she stepped into the late morning sunlight outside her building, Ladonna wondered what she should do now that she was out. It was her birthday, after all, and she wanted to have a nice day in this city of strangers. She had just moved to the city a week before. She worked for a large company who did big and important things, though Ladonna didn’t quite care what those things were. She only cared about what she was supposed to care about – whatever her boss needed. She was one of the CEO’s secretary, which meant that she made him coffee, took his phone calls and made appointments. She never really cared what those phone calls or appointments were about. The Boss had moved here to run one of the local offices, and as she had nothing much tying her down in her old city, she came along.

The Boss had met his mistress at a café near her house, Ladonna knew, for she had made the appointment with the mistress herself, so she decided to head there for a cup of coffee and a smoke. The café was a pleasant place with little white tables out on the sidewalk for those lowlifes of the American society who still needed to puff smoke into their lungs. Ladonna didn’t really mind being one of them. She sat down at one of the tables and waited to be noticed by one of the laughing waitresses inside. Eventually one of those fresh faced young women came out, still smiling from whatever joke had been shared by her and her friends.

“Hi, would you like a menu or do you just want coffee?” She asked, her smile changing to a long practiced polite little uplifting of the corners of her lips.

“Just a coffee, thanks. And an ashtray, if you could be so kind,” replied Ladonna, imitating without realizing it the empty little smile. The waitress came back within minutes with the frothy cappuccino and a small ashtray. Ladonna thanked her with the fake smile again, and sighed with delight as she took a sip of the coffee. It was good, better than the ones she made herself at home. She took her cigarettes out of her coat pocket, shook one out of the soft pack, and lit it with the lighter that inhabited her jeans pocket perpetually. She took drags in between sips of coffee and enjoyed a moment of quiet in a public place, something she had not enjoyed for a long time. It was nice to go to a café on your own – she had always thought this, but she hadn’t gotten around to doing it in a long time. She watched the traffic flow by lazily, with the occasional halfhearted honk, for who could be rushing on a lovely sunlit morning like this? A homeless man across the street pushed his cart in a seemingly chipper way, though he was probably just rushing to the nearest soup kitchen before it closed. A woman with three blubbering children walked by, trying to wipe the nose of one, pull the other from the curb and stop the third from spitting out his food at the same time. Ladonna smiled indulgently on it all, knowing that it looked lovely to her only because she was in a good mood and thinking how nice it would be if good moods really affected the world in some way.

Her coffee and cigarette finished, she waved the waitress over, and asked for the bill. As the waitress was bringing over the bill, Ladonna noticed her name tag. It said RONDA on it. The name tickled her memory so much that when the waitress came back to take the money and her tip, Ladonna decided to ask her what her name was.

“Ronda,” She smiled and pointed at the name-tag.

“Yes, yes, but I meant what’s your full name?” Ladonna caught the look of confusion on Ronda’s face and added quickly “It’s just that you seem familiar and I was wondering if you were related to someone I know.”

“Oh, then my full name is Ronda Bantam-Clements. I got both my mom’s and my dad’s last name. Could you be related to one of them? I know my mom’s got a bunch of family she doesn’t speak to.” Ronda nattered on about her family history for a while before Ladonna cut her off, saying that she must have been mistaken and she didn’t know her after all.

Ronda Bantam Clements. Ronda B. Clements. How odd. Another of the spam emails that morning had that name listed as the sender. What a strange day this is, Ladonna thought to herself.

The discovery of Ronda B. Clements made up Ladonna’s mind. She would go and buy a lottery ticket. Who knows, she thought to herself, perhaps a coincidental day is all that’s needed to get lucky. Ladonna found a convenience store, and asked the large man behind the counter for a lottery ticket for tonight’s drawing. He looked at her strangely, as if it was a very odd request, before tearing off a ticket with numbers to be filled in and handed her a pen.

“Here, love.” The man said, revealing his strong English accent and his penchant for calling total strangers by pet names. Ladonna filled out the lottery ticket, thanked the man and was about to leave when she heard the tune of the beginning of the noon newscast come on the television across the counter. She hadn’t even opened her newspaper that morning, so she paused and looked at the off-color screen to listen to the five minute news edition.

“It’s twelve o’clock, and I’m John Irving with the news. Three people died and a fourth was severely injured last night in an accident involving a tractor. The details of the incident haven’t yet been released, but Ricky Charles, the sole survivor, exclusively told our reporters that the incident revolved around a drug induced cult act. More details will be released later.

In other news, ‘Cereals are in danger’ says specialist…”

Ladonna didn’t want to hear any more. She walked briskly away from the shop, shaking her head and trying to understand what was happening to make today so strange. Ricky Charles, the sole survivor of whatever freak accident happened with that tractor, was another of the names on Ladonna’s spam emails that morning, and Ladonna was getting uncomfortably aware that something strange was going on today. Something she could not explain, something she did not even know how to describe. After all, it might just be a very odd coincidence. But what are the odds of finding your own name on a spam email, finding another spam-sender serving you coffee and discovering a third as a name on the news? Something about today is definitely off, Ladonna decided.

Cat Logic

Human logic: I feed the cat, therefor the cat is mine.
Cat logic: Human feeds me, therefor, human is my slave.

Human logic: Best time to pet cat is when relaxing, in front of the TV for instance.
Cat logic: Best time to be pet is when human is shuffling papers, typing on keyboard, or, as a general rule, whenever human is busy.

Human logic: Awe, my cat is rubbing his head on my leg. My cat loves me!
Cat logic: Notice me, Slave. I’m hungry.

Human logic: My cats are cuddling with each other – how sweet!
Cat logic: I’m cold, and am putting up with the other fur-ball. Turn the heater on, Slave.

Human logic: I’m a decent person, but I sure know my flaws and limits.
Cat logic: I am a cat. Therefor, I am perfect.

Human logic: Some days, I wish I could sleep forever. I know I can’t do that, though.
Cat logic: Zzzzzz…

O, Fortuitous Doves!

Language is an incredible thing. I love language. Not in the rules-and-regulations-of-language way, but rather in the O-such-awesome-uses-for-it way. I do understand that I’m not being clear in any manner or fashion, and so I’ll try to explain myself. Though before I move on, I would like to say that despite what I said before I am very much a stickler for the rules and regulations of language, insofar as I’m aware of them, and I definitely have my pet peeves about commonly misspelled words and missing apostrophes and such.

Now, to explain what I mean about my love of language. Specifically, the English language. Don’t get my wrong, Hebrew has its own very unique and incredible words, phrases and uses – both the everyday Hebrew and the biblical Hebrew. But right now, I’m talking about the English language. One of my favorite things about it is that it is extremely rich and diverse. There are seemingly endless adjectives to describe things – for example, all the following can mean good when used in the right way: cool, awesome, magnificent, great, nice, alright, fine, etc. Verbs are also extremely specific, and, of course, equally endless – an example for this is the distinction between running and jogging. In Hebrew, there is only running and something called “light running.”

Another thing I love about English – and here is what started this whole post – is how random words can sound so good when strung together, even if they don’t make much sense. For instance: O, fortuitous doves! How thee rustle with luminescent gems, a-sparkle with the glow of Cheddar and Lucky-Charms! Crowned as you are with the pearls of a hundred singing urchins, thou shalt not pass for galloping gargoyles in the harsh winter!

See? A string of words bearing almost no relation to each other – but somehow, you WANT them to make sense. I love language.

Halfway ‘Round the World

Flying is a journey that begins hours before it is actually underway with packing, passport gathering, and final checks of house and pets and luggage. Once the keys lock the door and the luggage is in the taxi, it is still only the merest beginning of the ordeal. Airports are no picnic, and the security in Israel is stricter than most places. Young, post-military-service men and women look at the passports in an  appraising, ask if you’ve packed your own bags, and explain that they’re asking because you might have taken something from someone that you deemed innocent but would actually be dangerous.

A few lines, machines, check-ins and difficulties later, the next part of the trip begins: the perils of the Duty-Free Shopping Area. While many are drawn to this most dangerous of all airport pursuits, my mother and I are not among those many – in fact, quite the opposite. While others might stroll up and down the lanes of various James Richardsons and Tommy Hilfigers and The-Tie-Shops, we huddle in the most remote of coffee-shops, sip our beverages, and try to hide from the too-alert-for-this-hour shoppers.

Next, of course, is the constant peering at watches and clocks, the straining of the ears to hear the garbled messages that come over the loudspeaker, and, in the end, the walk to the right gate quite a while before boarding starts, just so we won’t be late. Here, again, begins the process of tickets, passports, lines and shuffling forward one step at a time, until our feet actually set upon the cheaply carpeted floor of the airplane, and we find our cheaply leathered or upholstered seats. Setting our behinds down in those, we ready ourselves for the many, many, many hours ahead.

All this was just the beginning.

The Unremarkable Man on the Route 46 Bus

An unremarkable man, wearing an unremarkable pair of jeans and unremarkable long sleeved shirt, stepped onto the Route 46 bus as it juddered to a halt at the Route 46 bus-stop. He flashed his monthly bus-pass at the driver who waved him into the interior of the bus (without looking at the man’s unremarkable picture and name on the bus-pass). The man walked unobtrusively into the bus, which was quite a feat as it was an early Monday morning and the bus was packed full of early Monday morning commuters, dressed in suits or geared up for the gym.

There were, of course, no seats available on the bus, and so the man had no choice but to hold onto one of the rails and stand, in an unremarkable fashion, as the bus began trundling out of the station with much clanking, banging and groaning.

It was good that two other passengers had gotten on at the same stop as the man had, or the people on the bus would have been very confused as to the reason the bus driver had stopped. No passengers had gotten off, and nobody had actually noticed the unremarkable man got on the bus at all, so it was good that the old man and his small granddaughter had been waiting at that particular Route 46 bus-stop as well. When people looked over as the unremarkable man, their gazes slid off him and they would focus on their neighbor’s magazine or the sunlight outside or the Route 46 map that hung right above the man.

The unremarkable man, used to this sort of treatment, didn’t even try to dominate the space he stood in. Instead, he let the space float around him and he let people’s eyes slide away from him, and he focused on his first project of the morning: the little girl who had gotten on with the old man at that particular Route 46 bus-stop. The girl was almost as unremarkable as the man, he thought; she was quiet, focused only on the ragged teddy-bear in her arms, and seemed not to notice her grandfather’s wheezing and coughing as he unfolded a newspaper and ignored her. The girl’s hair was an unremarkable brown, not shiny or bouncy or curly, but simply lying limply and often obscuring her face as it swung back and forth with the motion of the bus. The girl’s face, half hidden by the unremarkable hair, was plain and expressionless as she stared at the teddy-bear on her lap and twisted his ears in an absentminded way.

The unremarkable man was usually drawn to flashy characters – women in orange spandex suits fiddling with their sunglasses and purses, clowns on their ways to birthday parties looking grumpy and hot in their makeup and outfits, suited men and women who seemed only to be waiting for their next cigarette and who shouted on their cellphones. Today, though, the unremarkable man decided he was interested in an unremarkable girl. He focused his thoughts on her, and her eyes snapped up to look into his. And there it was, for a split second.

…grandaddy is so boring he’s reading the newspaper again and mr. snuffles is bored because i’m bored too and why does grandaddy have to take me to kindergarten anyway i mean he isn’t as funny as mommy is on the bus and anyway he doesn’t talk to mr. snuffles like mommy or daddy do and i’m hungry but grandaddy said that buying ice-cream early in the morning would make my teeth rotten but i don’t care because i like dr. leslie that dentist who mommy took me to because she gave me a sticker and a lolly-pop and said i was a good little girl and that my teeth would never be rotten if i kept coming to see her and mommy laughed and patted my hair and said we’ll keep coming back to see dr. leslie and miriam is going to bring me a brownie her mom made today to kindergarten and maybe mommy will pick me up and grandaddy won’t be with her anyd then i won’t have to sleep at his house tonight and i’ll be able to go home and watch barnie with mommy and then go to bed with my yellow blankets and mr. snuffles will be happy because mommy will sing us a lullaby…

The unremarkable man broke his eye-contact with the girl, who promptly turned away and continued to twist Mr. Snuffle’s worn-out ears. The man almost gasped. His brow was dripping with sweat. For a moment, everyone on the bus almost noticed him standing there. Then the moment passed, and the man calmed himself, smiling in such a manner which in anyone less unremarkable would seem to be amused. I’VE GOTTEN LAZY, thought the unremarkable man. I’LL HAVE TO FIND SOME MORE LIKE THAT GIRL. SUCH VIVIDNESS COULD LAST FOR WEEKS. WHO KNOWS? MAYBE OTHERS LIKE HER WILL MAKE ME REAL AGAIN.

Teenager Sarah – Chapter 3 [Part I]

Hannah gets here, and tells Mathew and me that Steve isn’t coming. We grumble a bit and then the doors of The Slob open and we wait for the first rush of people to go in before we do. It’s not a band that we know, so it’s not important to us to be up front, and if we won’t like them, it’ll be easier to get out if we’re already at the back of the crowd.

We wait for a few minutes, and then a pretty black haired girl comes up to the microphone and tells the crowd that she’s proud to present Dragon Blood. Three guys walk onto the stage- they’re all dressed in a sort of eighties glam style with open glittery shirts and tights. One of them kisses the girl and then pushes past her to the microphone.

“Hello, we’re Dragon Blood, and we’re gonna blow your minds,” he announces.

The three of us groan.

“I hate when the bands are all ‘oh, we’re so awesome’ like that. Haven’t these people ever heard of modesty?” Hannah says as the band starts playing. They’re ok-ish, very eighties hair-metal, but nothing to gush about. The singer’s a bit off-key, and the bass is a little too loud. I look over at the guys after a couple songs and see that Mathew looks bored and Hannah’s still got an annoyed look on her face.

“Feel like going, guys?” I say loudly to them. They both nod, and we edge our way to the doors and step out into the cool night air.

“Ugh, I hate bands like that!” Hannah says again.

“I do too. And they weren’t that good. And what’s the deal with their drummer? I mean, he couldn’t keep a steady beat!” Mathew rants on in this vein for a couple minutes until I yawn and he gets the point and shuts up.

“So what now?” I ask. “Do you guys want to hang out somewhere or should we just split up and go home?”

“I’m hungry. You guys want to go to Freeway?” Mathew suggests. Hannah and I agree, so we start walking to the bus stop that’ll take us to the edge of the city where Freeway is at a gas-station on its name-sake.

We wait for the bus forever, obviously. We could have walked to Freeway and finished our meal by the time the bus finally gets here. When it actually does get here, we all traipse onto it, digging our crumpled bus passes out of our pockets. I think I have about four different bus passes in my various jeans-jacket-and-sweatshirt pockets, all conveniently handy for whenever I need to take one of the dinky old buses that count as public transportation in this place.

Hannah and I, sisterly as always, choose a double seat for ourselves and let Mathew sit behind us. Bad idea – he immediately begins blowing into Hannah’s ear. He ends up being swatted by her long-nailed right hand, of course, and finally desists.

As we ride, Hannah and I, oblivious as always to Mathew’s presence at such times, start talking about the cuties on the bus.

“Mm, look at that one, Hanners,” I say, nodding towards the back of a blonde head two seats in front of us.

“Urgh, no, Sarah look – when he turns his head you’ll see.” Sure enough, the guy turns his head and reveals himself to be in possession of a hooked nose and quite a few more wrinkles than his bouncy blonde hair would suggest. Not that Hannah and I have anything against older guys as a rule – we’re both the first to admit that Hugh Laurie pushes our buttons.

I can hear Mathew sigh and take out his Ipod as Hannah and I continue with our nonsense. I know there are more important things in the world than boys – much more important things. But when I’m with Hannah, it’s as if we’re possessed by the spirit of Ditz. We just have to talk about guys, fashion and gossip. I don’t know why we do that really.

Finally, the bus hunkers down – with much groaning and squeaking – at the Freeway stop. Mathew, finally pulling his earphones out of his ears, slings one arm around Hannah’s shoulders and the other around mine.

“Well, girls, I’m starving. Let’s eat.”