Dream 2: No Skates

4/02/09

My cousins, or possibly Alex Dadras and Erik Stumpf, were visiting, and we were prepared to go out and enjoy ourselves for the day, as it was generally sunny and nice out, but first my mom insisted on buying me roller skates. So we wound up in front of a skate shop, on a steep and narrow commercial hill that reminded me of San Francisco, and my friends and I waited outside as my mom went in to purchase the skates. We had been standing out there a long time, and it grew dark out. I remember peeking my head in the store to see what the hell was taking so long, and just saw my mom bullshitting with the clerk, holding a box in her hand, so I assumed the transaction was almost done.

Music started to pump all around me, and soon enough my surrounding environment more resembled a dance hall than a sidewalk and street. There were teenage kids all around us, just dancing and mingling like some social event or college party! So, acclimating to the radically new scene, I started to dance as well. At that point, I had forgotten that I had been waiting for hours to get the goddamn skates so that my friends and I could be on our merry way. On a parenthetical note, now I understand why shops play music – to keep their patrons entertained, but more importantly, patient. Because waiting sucks.

But I was enjoying myself, dancing as I usually do to Gwen Stefani’s “Cool,” when the music turned off abruptly. Everyone around us got real silent and awkward again…it really was  like a college party! I popped back into the skate shop, where my mother was now at the cashier desk, and I screamed like a drunkard, “Hey! Can you put Gwen Stefani back on?!” So he did, and I started dancing again, until I realized that it was getting light out again, and we must have been hanging out like assholes in front of that skate shop all night, and I decided it was time to ditch.

Coincidentally, it was at that moment that my mother walked out of the shop with my brand-new pair of roller skates that I never wanted. However, she no longer resembled my mother, but rather a balding, middle-aged man, with glasses who dressed like a computer programmer. He insisted that we three – Alex, Erik, and I – sit down so that he may explain to us the significance of the roller skates before we use them. I stood up and started to walk out in disgust – through the tunnel in the side of the nearest building. He-Mom called me back in haste, still in a woman’s voice, pleading with me to stay “just one minute!” Realizing she meant well, and that she was, after all, doing this out of her own selfless sense of generosity, I cooled off and sat back down, still itching to leave.

Then he began to explain how to use the skates properly, going into excruciating detail and expounding on the useless features and mechanisms of the skates, how lucky I was, how appreciative I should be, what to do and what not to do in my skates… and I finally exploded in the most aggressive vitriol I ever thought I could harvest.

Shooting out of my seat, arms tensed and fists swollen with rage, head cocked forward, I ranted,

“FUCK your STUPID skates, if I ever had to go ANYWHERE I’d FUCKING RUN ON MY FUCKING TWO LEGS, I NEVER wanted those FUCKING STUPID SKATES, you wasted my FUCKING TIME buying those FUCKING things, if I needed to GO somewhere I’d FUCKING RUN OR FUCKING RIDE A SCOOTER THERE, If YOU think I’m putting THOSE FUCKING THINGS ON MY FUCKING FEET, YOU’RE FUCKING MISTAKEN, this is the STUPIDEST GIFT you’ve EVER BOUGHT!!”