MonkeyPants

Drunkie the Clown.

This is going to make me sound like a terrible, terrible lush. I have no excuse, but it is Stupid Sunday, and drunkenness and stupidity go together like, uh, one glass of red wine goes with another glass of red wine.

It wasn’t that long after my mom died. I was drinking a lot. It was not a good time in my life. I feel blessed that my friends didn’t cull me for being a useless, sodden lump.

Anyway, I was heading home from the Fringe, and E wasn’t with me, for whatever reason. Just in front of the firehall, I stumbled and fell. I wasn’t hurt, but I wasn’t inclined to get up. I’d conveniently landed on my back, and I just looked way up at the chestnut trees and the dark sky beyond them. I was thinking about light pollution and how it was such a shame I couldn’t see the stars. Because here I was, lying on the sidewalk and looking for stars.

Gradually it occurred to me that I was technically on the firehall’s driveway. Where the trucks drove. With urgency. Would the firemen stop for me? If they saw me. I mean, I know those firemen are pretty nice. They let me use their hot water way back when I was working on a student film. They always answer all the questions at the open houses, and let the kids (and me) try on the fire pants. The captain walks his dog in the community and stops to chat. They are nice guys.

I guess I was there for about ten minutes, lying on the firehall driveway and pondering my mortality and whether or not the fire trucks would run me over. Not once did it occur to me to move and do my pondering elsewhere, or that a drunk woman lying on the sidewalk might be considered a target by passers-by. (There were none.)

Eventually I did totter on home, where I lectured E about light pollution for a while before falling into bed. But lying around on the firehall driveway? Not my brightest idea.

Here’s Andrew the fireman and me.