Tin.Can.Goat

I stepped through the café door and walked to the table where my friends were enthusiastically waving me over. 

“Hey guys, what’s up?” I said, and shook my Pepsi cup. “Just getting some water.”

“We were waving you away,” Pete said. He sipped his coffee and continued to drawing circles on a yellow pad in front of him with his other hand. “What’d I say about eye contact?”

“I gotta run,” said Joyce, and she patted me on the shoulder as she passed. She’s a sweet person.

Travis looked up from his pie. “Where you going? Take me with you.”

She paused at the door. “I don’t know…force myself to take a shit, or something.”

“I’ll still go.”

She paused and looked at Travis, biting her lower lip. “Alright,” she said, and jerked her head towards the door before turning and walking out.

Travis scrambled past and kicked his dropped fork under a nearby counter.

I sat across from Pete and watched him draw circles. “What’s with the circles?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said, and took another sip of coffee with his free hand.

“Doing art?”

“Nope.”

“Math?”

He stopped and looked up at me.

I looked away. “I guess not. Are you bored?”

“Starting to get that way.”

“Maybe switch it up. Try trapezoids, or something.”

“Not from the circles.”

“You want my red pen?” I pulled the pen from my shirt, and offered it across the table. “It’ll help break up the color.”

“Listen, my arm hurts. It’s been numb all morning and drawing circles seems to loosen it up.” Pete rubbed his elbow. “That’s all.”

“I hear ya. My upper lips been hurting me all morning.” I poked my finger into my lip. “Feels like I was punched.”

“Did you wake up in an alley?”

“No. Why?”

“You weren’t punched. Probably just jammed your toothbrush up there.”

“Ah,” I said, and ran my tongue across my gums. “I’d say that’s a pretty good guess.”

He continued drawing circles.

“Is it working?” I asked.

“I said it was,” he said.

“Oh yeah. You did. Sorry.” I took a sip of water. “Hey, you ever think about what sense you would hate to lose, if you had to lose any? Like, any you couldn’t live without?”

“I wouldn’t mind sound right now,” Pete said without looking up.

“For me it’d be sight. I mean, I’m blind already without my contacts. But losing my sight would definitely suck.”

“Yeah, that’d be a tough one.”

“Not because I’m afraid of the dark though. I’m more afraid that people would mess with me.”

Pete stopped drawing and looked up. “How so?” he said.

I flicked my pen and it spun across the tabletop. Pete caught it and rolled it back to me.

“Well,” I said. “I have bad short-term memory. If I don’t put something in the same place—especially at home—I cannot find it again.

“Take last night, for example. I put my pants next to my alarm clock—“

Pete raised his eyebrows.

“It was convenient. Anyways, I get out of the shower this morning and my pants are gone. I looked all over the area. I even got down on my knees and looked under the bed. I could swear to you that I put them on the nightstand last night, but now they were simply…gone. Like magic.

“So my wife hears me in there making a fit, and she says, ‘What are you looking for?’.

“‘My damn pants,’ I say, and she walks over to the dirty-close hamper and lo, picks up my pants.

“‘These?’ she says, and I snatch them out of her hands.

“‘Yes,’ I say. ‘How the hell did they get over there?’

“‘I was folding clothes,’ she says.

“‘These weren’t folded,’ I say, accusingly.

“‘No, but they were on the alarm clock, and in the way,’ she says, and walks out of the room.

“I tell you Pete, she was messing with me. I should have followed her into the hall and seen if she was laughing at me.”

Pete looked at me, his jaw slack. “Did you say, ‘lo’?” he asked, and stood up from the table, gathering his stuff. “Listen, I’d really love to stay, but I, um, I don’t know…I guess I feel a shit coming on too.”

“Ok man,” I said. “I’ll catch you later. Come see me.”

Pete waved over his shoulder as he exited the room.

I really like these guys.

[741]

My thumbs are a conversation starter.

Even now I’ve started one and you are reading it.

I never really considered writing about my awkward thumbs before, but a recent experience during my karate class two weeks ago forced me to realize that writing about it was necessary. I figured it best to educate people before they meet me. At least, this way, we should be able to forgo the typical “Oh my God!”’s, the “WTF?”’s, and the “Dude, seriously. You sure those aren’t toes?”’s.

“This guy is kicking my butt,” I said. I touched my enflamed pectoral, and winced. “I’m getting way too old for this crap.”

“Suck it up old man.”

I looked at John. At 58, and 20-years my senior, he was in awesome shape. His remark bit, and I muttered a retort under my breath.

He winked, and with a jump, pulled out twenty full chin-ups.

I stared. A twinge crossed my eyes. One of jealousy, yet mixed with admiration. Oh, if only he’d drop and break his hip, I thought. But he landed with a delicate thup and, bent over at the waist, shook the sweat from his hair.

“You wouldn’t be so fat and out-of-shape if you did this every day,” he said. “Once a week is pathetic.”

“This is my second.” I said.

He looked at me and kissed a bicep. “Cannons. Next time I’ll get fatty over there to hug my legs while I do it.”

I glanced at the overweight teenager sitting cross-legged against the far wall.

“Yeah, him,” the old man said. “The one that looks like a thinner, younger version of you.” He cockatieled in the mirror. “Getting too strong. I could use a challenge.”

“I am not that fat.” I poked my thumb into my abdomen. “Just a little pudgy in the middle.”

“Good Lord, look at those meat hooks.” He grabbed my wrist and turned it over in his hands. “With these meaty palms and the thick covering of fur, you look the offspring of an orangutan.”

“No, now look—“

“How did you escape?”

“Escape?—What?”

“From Dr. Moreau.

“I’ll bet he’s super pissed he lost the likes of you. Probably the closest looking thing to a human he’s engineered. An anthropologic marvel.”

“Whatever,” I said, and followed him back onto the mats.

Our instructor paced as we lined up, his thumbs locked in this belt. “On your bellies,” he said. “Time for some pyramids.”

I sat up, and raised my hand. “Is that like diamonds?”

He put his hands up in front of his eyes. “Triiii-aaaaangle. See how my thumbs and forefingers make a triiii-aaaaangle?”

I nodded.

“Then it’s a triangle. If I moved my thumbs down like this—”

I interjected, “Then it’s a diamond. But my thum—”

“Triiii-aaaaangle.”

Someone behind me sighed.

“Sir. I know what you’re saying, but what does—“

“What does it matter?”

I nodded.

“It matters, because the diamond works different muscles in your chubby arms than the triangle.”

He knelt down in front of me. “Now look. Put your hands down on the mat like this.

“See how mine is the shape of a triiii-aaaaangle?”

“Yes sir.”

“Ok, do that.”

I placed my triangle on the mat, and he rocked back as if I were diseased.

“What the hell is that? Looks like an experimental aircraft.”

“Language!” The school-owner’s wife called out from the back office.

His eyes rolled up and he scratched his head. “Language? What the he—?” He dropped his hand, and several parents shook their heads. “Oh yeah.”

“Sorry ma’am,” he called out to her. “Slip of the tongue.”

He dropped next to me. “Sorry about that. So here, put your weird Hobbit hands down again.”

I did. But my thumbs fought me and forced themselves in to a diamond, or inverted into a Star Trek insignia.

“Not so far out,” he said. “You’re not that badass—”

“Language!”

He rolled his eyes, and continued. “Bring that triangle-vagin—” He paused, his eyes wide and lips pulled back as he listened.

Nothing.

He continued. “Nah, not like that. You want it back here, more under your chest, like so. Yes, like that. Good. Good, Nancy.

“Ok, from now on, make sure both the diamond and the triangle are right there. Your breastbone should be bumping that di-mangle every time you go down.

“Think of it this way. When I was in the Corps, my D. I. said, ‘Picture you got your lady down there. She’s all spread-eagle on the floor under you. Waiting on you to get hard and show your peck—‘“

A scream, shrill and piercing, bansheed from the back. His eyes widened and he fell back onto his rear. “Guy!”

“Right,” he yelled back, and looked around at the curious pre-teens in the room and their shocked parents who lined the walls. He nodded to the parents. “Sorry ladies, I was getting a little carried away.”

“Guy!”

He glanced at the hallway to the office and stood. He brushed dust, hair, and a finger nail from his pants, and said, “I need to go for a few. Let’s, um…let’s do some…um…Jumping Jacks. That sounds—well, it just sounds right. And about now it just sounds pretty safe.”

He pointed at me. “Lead the count for me.”

I nodded and watched him stutter-step to the back, and close the door behind him.

We stared in silence as the door rattled from the muffled voices. I looked at the students in front of me, and shrugged. “Ready?” I said.

The kids snapped to attention with a well-chorused, “Sir!”

We exercised, and I shook my head as I watched two women at the back of the class laugh and giggle as they scratched their armpits, and mockingly charaded the peeling of a banana.

[958]