boxterjulep

John the retard, who rode a three-wheeled bike with a broken bat in the metal basket, passed by a bunch of us kids along the river bank...

It was a miserable day. Nothing special: hot and humid like every day that summer. We were delirious and bored to death. We'd spent the whole day riding around our bikes in hopes that a breeze or gust of wind would pass over our bodies and cool us down. No such luck. We went to the community pool to see if that would help. We only ended up drenching ourselves in scalding hot chlorinated water. Like swimming in toilet water. Plus, the pool was crowded with little kids all putting that 'p' back in the ool. Our little joke. We decided to split, head back to town...

Along the river. Boat docks. That's where we were when John the retard passed by on his three-wheeled bike. We tried to get him to join us, but he must have thought we were making fun of him, which really we probably were. The village idiot, the tricycling punching bag. He waved his broken bat at us and we just started laughing. Someone called him a fucking retard. Someone else told him we'd kick his ass if he didn't get the fuck out of there. He moaned back and waved the bat like it was Thor's hammer. Another person yelled "what?!" and started to run after John. John put his bat back in his basket and started pedaling as fast as he could away from us. Huge laughs all around. Lingering comments of "fucking retard" also trickled out our mouths...

So to beat the heat and get our kicks we decided it would be fun to ride our bikes off the boat docks into some milky murky green river water. The water was no cooler than the community pool's but at least the river water came with a sense of unpredictability and danger, its toxic chemical make-up, unmeasured. We knew the water was fucked, smelled like a stagnant fish tank, but none of us really gave a shit. Everyone was trying out stupid stunts as they nose dived off the edge of the docks, each trying to out do the other.

I don't know who noticed it first but someone yelled to look up the river a ways. About a quarter of a mile up the river from us we saw water being splashed around by none other than John the Retard. Our initial reaction was along the lines of "what the fuck does that retard think he's doing? Why, he's copying us!" The way his body moved was unlike anything I had ever seen. Strange. Nothing fluid in his movements as he waved his arms around, helplessly. A retarded water ballet, I thought. I couldn't help it, I snickered somewhere inside. No sign of his big rig three-wheeled bike. No broken bat either. Just John in the middle of the water, bare fisted, fighting off unseen water imps, swinging and missing, never landing a punch. Then, he vanished.

None of us knew what the hell to do. We hopped on our bikes and hurried to the area where we thought he rode his bike into the water. We ran into a local guy half way there and told him what we saw. Without any hesitation he dived into the water. It didn't take him long to find John, but by then, it was, well, too late.

We stood around stunned for a long while as a crowd of locals stepped in to try to do something. We left upset, riding our bikes away from the river back into town. Maybe we all felt guilty, I don't know. Doesn't really matter. All we did was get angry at how stupid it was for that retard to go do something as dumb as that. What the fuck was he thinking? It was a miserable day already and John the fucking retard had to go die on us.


[I now go wild: "For the Love of Ivy" ]