Some new crank addicts have moved in around the corner. They live above the heroin dealer. On the 4th, I was walking to the parade whan I saw one of the women setting up a couple of lawn chairs on the curb. Now these people are whiter than fish bellies and I thought, just maybe, they were going to get a tan or something. But in the back of my mind, I knew that they thought the parade was coming down our street. It was not.
A few weeks ago on the bus, I overheard a girl telling someone over her cell phone that she was heading for Berkeley when she was actually headed in the opposite direction. After she said it a few times I butted in and told her she was on the wrong bus. She was of Indian descent and very cute. She had a strange looking Black girl with her. The Black girl was wearing a hoodie pulled down over her face and was very masculine. Her eyes were wild and crazy looking.
So the Indian girl asks me where to get off the bus and catch one to Berkeley. The Black girl starts telling her not to listen to no White woman. A White woman who is trying to make them get off in the middle of nowhere! She keeps going on about me being White, so they can't trust me, etc. I tell them to ask the bus driver, who is Black, if they don't believe me.
The Indian girl tells her she's getting off and the Black girl says she's staying on the bus. By this time we are in a totally different city. As the Indian girl gets off the bus the Black girl calls her an ugly bitch and says, "That's why you ain't got no friends!" Then the Black girl gets off at the next stop.
So, as usual no good deed goes unpunished, so when I saw the White trash druggies all set for the parade, I hesitated to butt in with my know it all attitude. Maybe they wouldn't believe me anyway!
There they sat in their cut offs, cuz no self respecting White trash meth addict would buy shorts premade. Why would you do that? When summer rolls around you can just hack off the bottoms of your pants below your butt cheeks and make shorts.
So I walked on past not willing to get involved. I watched the parade and walked back home. The tweekers were still sitting there waiting for the parade. More tweekers too. A really skeletal, shirtless guy in cut offs and a mullet was there, all smiles, waiting for the parade that wasn't coming.
"Did you see the parade?" they asked me eagerly.
"Yes," I said. "Oh no, I said, all innocence, were you thinking it was coming this way?"
"It's not? the girl with a thick mustache said.
"No, I said. I thought you might be thinking that, but I wasn't sure."
"Well what the fuck did you think we were putting out these chairs for?" she asked me testily.
Her boyfriend, Mr Mullet said, "It's Ok, we were wrong, somebody told us it was coming this way, is it over?"
"Yes," I said, feeling thoroughly guilty. Gawd, those poor pathetic people needed a nice parade to cheer them up.