Never Question My Methods

“So why weevils?”

I just like that they’re beatles with a more sinister name. I am certain that this makes them funnier. We could change them to something else.

“But who would go into an attic to look for them?”

Well, when I was growing up, our attic was overrun by squirrels . . .

“And did you go looking for them?”

. . . No . . .

Last Saturday night, the train was packed, jammed, stuffed to the gills, etc. My wife sat across the car from me, because because the guy on my left had his legs just about as far apart as they can go. On my right was a guy making elaborate hand gestures.

I was reading a book when I realized that the guy on my left is actually pressing into my leg with his knee.

Meanwhile, on my right, it seems like the flying fingers of hand gestures are getting crazier. Unable to concentrate on my reading, I look over at my wife, and realize that she is starting straight at me.

At first I smile, and then she doesn’t, and I realize that the look on her face suggests that she’s perplexed as to why I don’t see a looming threat: possibly an anvil suspended over my head with yarn. I would like to think about what this threat could be, but that knee is basically embedded into my thigh at this point, to the point where I feel like his Siamese twin.

Finally, we reach our stop. And while we don’t normally speak of such vulgarities as the overcrowding of trains, I feel obligated to mention this whole knee thing. And my wife asks, “So do you think that guy was in the Bloods?”

And I said, “What?”

“Like Bloods and Crips.”

And I say, “What?“

And she says, “He was dressed all in red. And had two red tears tattooed near his eye.”

And I say, “What?“

And she says, “If we wasn’t a Blood, he was probably the biggest Fan of the Bloods that someone could be.”*

And I said, “Oh.” Because I was seriously pondering complaining, aloud, about the whole knee thing. But a gang affiliation, yeah that changes everything.

*Which calls into question: if you’re a fan of a gang, to the point where it might actually put you at risk of being attacked by another gang, or questioned by the police, aren’t you basically in that gang anyway? And if not, shouldn’t you be? And if this person was grinding their knee into my leg, does this somehow make me affiliated? Is that an initiation?