You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Zombie Nation.
There are legions of unchecked children, tormented teens and recalcitrant tweens with a bad attitude and sour dispositions.
Where are the parents? Don’t they know that Solyent green is people?
Are the adults in this American horror flick drunk or lobotomized? Don’t they care their genetic mutant off spring are running amok, like Apes in a sci fi movie?
It’s a beautiful night. The air, for late May, is cool and dry.
It’s Memorial weekend and the town is packed with visitors. Main Street looks like a Norman Rockwell painting. This is small town America with its welcome mat out and American flag flying proudly. The town square is neatly manicured, dressed with bright flowers, civil war cannons polished and a Confederate soldier statue smiling.
The sidewalks are packed with moms and dads and grandparents. They walk slowly and talk about the old times, an oldies station somewhere in the distance is inevitably playing the sound track to their existence.
As the old folks walk. The young people slither. They are glazed over lunatics, eyes bugging out of of their pre-pubescent heads. Somewhere an angry version of Ice T and NWA is playing in their brains. It’s loud it’s crazy, it’s a flash point of inner angst about to boil out of the pot.
The children are free and possessed and unchecked. This Norman Rockwell image has become a neon lit black light of trouble.
While mom and dad make sure grandpa doesn’t fall or soil himself in public, the pack of teen mutants and elementary school miscreants roam the street.
The teens are not loud or militaristic like a Haitian coup. They are silent like CIA stealth. They roam in packs, slowly, like a biological disease wearing flip flops.
This horde of tweens and teens and prepubescent angst bags are quietly sizing up the world. I watch them sneering, laughing, texting, like a secret order of the criminally ordained.
They scowl at adults, their cynicism is palpable, they are ready to take over the world with their distorted view of how things should be.
While the teens roam, the elementary school kids are high on who knows what?
They are ages 7 to 10 and they are like packs of brainless wolves, darting in and out of pedestrian traffic, playing an insane game of tag where nothing matters except who is IT.
I am seated in a restaurant next to the sidewalk. A young boy with a devil face and horns is playing with a chain that is attached to the external facade of the building. The chain hangs directly in front of the window where I am seated.
The child is loud enough that I can hear him through the glass. He is chortling like a rabid hyena, howling at a moon full of diseased meat.
I watch this boy, perhaps 9, maybe ten. His eyes are glowing red, a sure sign he is the spawn of something undead.
Where are his parents I wonder.
I look through the glass and see a sidewalk of unchecked children. It’s a Pink Floyd video of crazy faces and hopelessness.
All in all, we are just bricks in the wall.
Then Satan’s spawn begins slamming the thick, heavy links against the glass window.
Crash. Clank. Bang.
I stare at the kid who is apparently unaware that heavy metal smashed against glass can create an issue of shattered proportions.
Bang. Clank. Crash.
People inside the restaurant stop and stare. The dinner ambiance is replaced by a feeling of concern?
Is he a tiny terrorist?
I knock on the glass with my knuckle trying to get his attention. He hears the tap, but can he see me through the reflection of his own bad actions?
I see him stare into the restaurant. Through the demonic veneer, I see the face of a small boy.
He is holding the chain link ready to slam it against the glass yet again.
Again I try and get his attention, to wag my finger at him, to let him know this is inappropriate.
The chain is in his hand, attached to the brick facade of the building on either side of the window where I am seated.
The kinetic energy is high as the arc of the chain will surely damage the glass.
All he has do it let it go and it will undoubtedly swing in a predestined arc, slamming against the window, sending shards of glass inward.
Suddenly, from out of the periphery of lost parents, a woman steps forward and grabs the young man by the shoulder. She is stern and has control. Is she his mother? Who cares? She is reasonable and exerts control.
I watch as the demonic possession leaves his face and he stares at the woman with a nervous gaze.
He is suddenly in Kindergarten and being put in the time out chair.
She takes hold of the thick chain and gently places back in its resting position.
The kinetic energy is at zero and the glass safe from disaster.
The boy disappears into the group and the mass of humanity fills the space in front of the window.
I take a sip of my beer and ponder life through the looking glass of this purely Americana vision.
recalcitrant teens and querulous prepubescent children rush back and forth like beetles scurrying from a fire.
I see adults hypnotized, walking slowly, unaware that something insidious lurks just ahead.
Small town possession.
Wake up and smell the insolence people.
Wake Up!
Life’s Crazy™