I drove through the whole city
Can you imagine?
All the way through that horrible city
Just to get to my horrible job.
My car was a small rusty thing,
The bumper held up by a wire,
The windshield splattered with old bug-juice,
Smeared across my line of vision,
The pitiful wipers useless.
But what was windshield and what was lack of sleep?
My coffee was only just beginning
To kickstart my dream-besotted brain.
Was I not peering through the wide end of a spyglass
Into a world
That I needed to keep as far away as possible?
That was when he stopped me
Like a wasp
Even though I cannot explain
All these years later
How it was that I was able to keep living in a world
Where a wasp can stop you
Just to receive its sting,
I'm rolling down the window
And he's just inches away
All scrubbed clean and shaved and uniformed
As if for an inspection
And he's asking, "Do you know why I stopped you?"
"Ja" I say, in surprisingly perfect Hochdeutsch.
"Du bist ein Stuckchen Sheisse."
"What did you say to me?", he snapped.
"Nothing", I said.
I think that was some kind of tipping point for me.
I was 33.
(Article changed on Oct 08, 2023 at 8:38 AM EDT)
(Article changed on Oct 08, 2023 at 9:05 AM EDT)
(Article changed on Oct 08, 2023 at 5:35 PM EDT)
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