The Skeets of Bannerman Park
The Worn-Out Skeet
It was early afternoon on a humid day in the park. There seemed to be several groups of women with infants. A few were breastfeeding. Maybe it is the same group of new mothers who gather for yoga sessions in the park. Weaving through the groups of young mothers was a guy who was staggering. He looked like he was going down.
It seemed early in the day to be loaded drunk, but he looked like he could be loaded drunk. 35 years old maybe. Slight. Now, he is not a skeet. He may be a bum and he may have been a skeet but he is long past wearing a baseball hat backwards. It is not likely there is any humour left in his life. Skeets laugh. Skeets get some pleasure about getting up to some badness and getting away with it. The staggering bum is long past pleasure. Skeets know where they are coming from and going to. The staggering bum was just trying to stay upright.
The Skeets With A Child In A Wheelchair
It was one of those motorized wheelchairs and the girl in the chair looked like she was 10 or 11. The girl in the wheelchair didn’t seem to be able to move her arms. She was accompanied by three people who sat on the flower garden wall opposite the snack bar. Two young people who appeared to be her mother and father sat on one side of her and another older woman, who may have been her grandmother, sat on the other.
Her father was a lean skeet who said ‘fuck’ a lot. He seemed to be complaining about a place he worked and called his fellow employees ‘fucking retards.’ The older woman said she liked working at whatever the place of business was, except she said she worked the night shift.
It was a hot day and they seemed to be having a good time. The child’s father described the milkshake they were sharing with the child in the wheelchair as “deadly.” He didn’t say anything about the cigarette he was sharing with the older woman. The woman who appeared to be the child’s mother wore a light, spring dress. When she crossed her legs you could see the tattoo on her thigh. On the back of her left hand she had a tattoo that went from her wrist down to her knuckles. That was the hand she used to reach into a large bag of no name brand potato chips, pull out a chip, and gently hold it for the child in the wheelchair to eat.
The Skeets of Bannerman Park is an ongoing series by Roger Bill. You can get the whole series at The Skeets of Bannerman Park.
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