Some Days You Just Can't Get Rid Of A Bomb...

I should probably turn this into a short film. Hmm, I've got a 48hr challenge coming up... Posted Monday, March 02, 2009

So, not long ago, I was walking to school to pick up the boy. (Walking because Lisa's got me on a diet, and if I exercise I can afford to drink a beer at night.)

In the street in front of me, some trash. And not just any trash. As I approached, I noticed pictures. Flesh. A lot of flesh. A lot of male flesh. Somebody had tossed gay porn in the street. It was the insert on a DVD. Kids walk to and from school along this street, so I picked it up and figured I'd toss it in the next trashcan. Then ahead, I saw pieces of a DVD case, and finally, the disc itself, artwork on it that was sufficiently graphic.

There's no way this accidentally fell like this, coming apart and rolling hither and thither. Someone tossed out gay porn over the course of a couple of blocks. What the hell was going on in that car? Enough pathology to fill a dozen Jack Chick pamphlets, I'd wager. Good thing a solid citizen like myself found these prurient castoffs and can dispose of them properly.

But as I walked toward the school, a desperate realization began to crawl over me -- it was not trash-day. No one had their trashcans out.

And I was approaching an elementary school with gay porn in my hand.

All right, take it easy. Panic kills. But not as much as showing up at an elementary school with gay porn in your hand. I looked at it again. The title was "Dads Doing Dads." Oh, fuck me! (No, wait, forget I said that.) It's bad enough that it's porn, but specialized porn... for some reason, if it was just "The Curious Taste of Benjamin's Bottom" or whatever your generic gay porn is being titled these days, it seemed like it would be more innocuous. But specifically about dads? Shit, they're going to string me up on the flag pole and beat me with those little stop-sign-poles the crossing guards use.

I began to think about what I could do. I couldn't even just throw it back in the street, now, I was too close to the school. And the churches! Oh my stars and garters, I have to pass two churches on the way to the school! Whose mailbox could I leave it in? There's that guy who put a billboard-sized "No-Bama" sign over his kid's treehouse from October to Inauguration Day, I bet he'd appreciate it...

Literally across the street from the school. Two trashcans. At one, some conscientious home owner was doing yard work and filling his can with leaves. I had to time it just right -- shit, he looked. Okay, okay, stay calm. There, the next can, I can just get there as he bends to pull some leaves out of his rake... got it!

I wiped my sweaty palms on my knees and crossed the street just as the bell rang.

The lesson we learned today? No good deed goes unpunished, my friends. Or always carry a trashbag if you're walking. Or, hell, don't walk. I'm giving up beer for Lent anyway.