B120-DES71
Silly Strings That Entangle
Copyright © by Dan Schneider, 11/15/03
About 4 years
ago I was tooling around the city of Minneapolis on a weeknight evening. The sun
had set & I believe it was late summer/early autumn. I forget whether I was
on my way home or killing time on the way to meet someone. Nonetheless, I
stopped in at the Cub Foods supermarket off of Minnehaha Avenue. I don’t
recall whether I was looking to buy something or merely dawdling. I was down an
aisle where they had pet food & was comparing prices when a band of 5 or 6
10-13 year old kids came running down the aisle holding cans of Silly String.
They were spraying each other with it & making a mess down all the aisles
they ran. 1 little punk tried to spray some of the gunk my way & I swatted
my arm at him & they ran off. What took me aback was that not a single of
the grocery store employees intervened & asked the kids to leave the store.
1 employee even came to clean up a mess with the kids making still more a few
yards away. The schlub dared not approach the kids. I could only reason that he
felt he might be accused of harassment or child abuse if he interceded, or even
chided the children. Off they ran into more mischief as I shook my head at the
blue collar coward. I bought something & checked out as the kids ran out of
the store.
A few minutes
later I was exiting the store when I came upon a terrible scene. A young mother-
early-mid 20s, blond, attractive- & her baby (in a stroller) were covered
head to foot with this Silly String gunk, as the little hellions went wild. The
SS was all over the mother & the stroller as she shrank in fear &
murmured. Other customers went in & out of the store staring at the site,
but dared do nothing, lest be labeled abusers. Another Cubs employee brought out
empty carts for the cart corral & also said & did nothing. Perhaps it
was the remanent White Knight in me, but I’d had enough. The ringleader of the
Junior Hellions was the biggest kid- a fat little brunet ass. I grabbed him by
his shirt collar, took his can of Silly String, threw it onto the grocery store
roof, & pushed him down onto the asphalt. Cried out the globular punk:
‘Hey, Mister, you can’t do that to me- I’m a kid!’ I replied: ‘Listen
up, you fat little fuck, I just did it. What’re you gonna do? Someone should
have done that to you years ago, & if you’re smart you’ll stop acting
like a little shit or the next time someone knocks you on your ass they’ll
hurt you alot more than I did. Besides, you’re fat ass is big enough that
you’re not hurt. Now why don’t you apologize to the lady?’ The other kids
in his posse were terrified, & had abandoned him to ‘the man who took it
no more’- as they probably referred to me later. Fatso got up, but instead of
apologizing, tore ass after the pals who had abandoned him. The Cubs employee
& the other customers did not applaud, nor chide me. They merely stood &
gaped in silence. I don’t know whether it was out of shock or approval. Even
the young mother was stunned. I tried to pull some of the SS off of her, but she
said, ‘That’s OK.’ & waved me off. I went to my car & drove off
without even so much as a ‘Thank you’ from the mother, or any of the other
folk.
I still
wonder whether the PC Minnesotan Nice nonsense may have branded me a child
abuser in the minds of those cowards. Still, that no one would stand up to
this little punk & his minions really disturbed me. It also brought to mind
an earlier incident where I was in the role of the little fat punk. When I was
12 or 13 I recall 1 winter evening when my best pal Ricky Gerhardt & I
were tossing snowballs at cars that passed on the 80th Street
overpass in Glendale, Queens. This was an elevated bridge that passed over the railroad that
connected to the notorious drug haven of Atlas Terminal. Ricky & I would hide
on the stairs to the street below & chuck up snowballs in the air to see how
the cars would react when the snowballs smooshed on their front windshields.
Most cars just kept on driving. Ricky & I felt smugly superior, not realizing
that we could potentially cause an accident. After a few dozen cars went by 1
car we hit stopped. Seeing the red brake lights come on sent Ricky into a panic
& he went running down the stairs & a block or 2 away to his home. I saw
this dude get out of the car & survey the land. For some reason I did not
run. I stood there, like some little punk trying to muster enough manhood. The
guy came towards me. He was an Italianate looking guy, scruffy- I cannot
honestly recall his features- not that it matters. He asked me where my little
pussy friend ran to. I said I didn’t know. He asked me if I thought I was
tough. I rejoindered: ‘Don’t know.’ I was scared, but the time to run was
when Ricky tore ass. I was stuck. The guy grabbed my arm & took me to the
car. I did not resist- even though my mom had drilled in to me the need to run
from strangers. I guess because I felt I had stopped him, that I was the
progenitor of what was to come. At the guy’s car, on this deserted snowy
overpass (3-4” had fallen), the guy opened his trunk & showed me a little
case inside. He then opened the case & pieced together what seemed to be a 3
piece gun- a machine gun, perhaps. I’m not sure. He stuck the barrel’s end
under my nose, as he held on to me- by now I was trying to back away. He then
said something to the effect that he could blow me away & no one would know
a damn thing. He laughed & told me to get the fuck out of there. I went back
to the stairs & down them. Not too quickly, as I did want to show I was not
as pussy as Ricky was. I don’t recall if I looked back, at least not until I
heard the car take off. At the bottom of the stairs Ricky was heading back &
asked me what happened. I never told him about the incident. Had I imagined the
bizarre little incident? Was the ‘80th Street Gunner’- as I later
dubbed him- a fiction, a bad guy turned Good Samaritan? I don’t know? Was he a
hitman trying to dissuade that part in me he recognized in himself? Was he….it
does not matter. I rarely thought of the incident in the intervening years.
Perhaps, that
night at Cubs, I was returning the cosmic favor to the little fat punk, albeit
in a kinder, gentler 1990s way. In my book, despite whatever crimes the 80th
Street Gunner may have committed before & after that night he scared me, a
part of me feels that his life was generally worth more than those gray, scared
little people that scurry about the aisles of glowing supermarkets in anonymity.
Does this mean that his method of dissuasion was proper? No. But I turned out
better than I might have because of him- whoever he was. Perhaps the little fat
kid, now nearing majority, thinks of that mean guy in the Cubs lot in the same
way. Better than being shiv’d in the dark over some reasonless, &
transient, argument.
Still,
the differences in approach of the Gunner & me, to our little antagonists,
marks quite vividly the turn society has taken- at least in this small regard.
& I am a noted optimist who ridicules the Chicken Littleism of recent
vintage. But, responsibility is a thing of the past- whether it's corporations
that pillage & abuse at will, people who fob off all their weaknesses on
others, or people who refuse to even stand up against the smallest of
injustices. Yet, I remember the sulfury end of that gun. What sticks in the
minds of the people who did nothing that night at the Minnehaha Cub Foods?
Return to Bylines