Assault by icicle

On Monday, Tina and I split our duties for the day. She took the car to run some errands and pick up groceries for that night.

I stayed back and worked on some photo and video editing.

The errands were short enough and it was warm enough that Talulah could ride along. One errand was picking up some “Learn French in your Car” CDs that we reserved. When Tina drove up to the library and parked the car, she noticed a handful of young black tweens standing nearby.

As she started for the door, one of the girls called out to Tina. “I think the library’s closed,” she said.

Tina turned and said, “It is? Man! I wonder why.” Tina explained that the girl’s voice was so sweet, and couldn’t help but notice the how kind the gesture was.

“Something about Pulaski day,” the girl explained.

Tina remembered that lots of Facebook updates were, “Happy Birthday, Chicago.”

“Darn!” said Tina and she started back to the car and reached for the door handle when an icicle the size of a small dog breezed by her head — missing by millimeters — and smashed across the window.

Tina blinked a couple times, assessing what just happened and wanted to doubt that one of these kids threw ice at her.

She turned around, her eyes were blinding red beams of laser lights and fire exploded from her mouth. “Did one of YOU throw ice at me!” she said angrily emphasizing ice at me. She also emphasized “Did you” as well as “one of” as well as a little bit of oomph in “YOU throw.”

I’m not kidding.

The kids trembled in fear. It’s not every day that you see lasers emit from eyes and fire breathe from mouths.

Except on TV.

Or maybe in the bible.

But this happened. I swear.

One kid cattily said, “What? Nah, we didn’t throw nothin’.”

Another kid said, “We’re sorry. We didn’t mean to.” Her sorries trailed off.

What pissed Tina off most was that one of those kids was sweet. And that sweetness contrasted the evil of getting targeted with an icicle.

It was an assault on her senses. It was an assault on faith in humanity. It was the disrespect.

And if there’s one thing that gets Tina’s eye lasers blazing, it’s disrespect.

“Don’t you ever … EVER … throw ice at me again!” yelled Tina and these kids who were turning into turtles, hiding their heads back in their shells. In a moment of desperation, Tina said she said, “I have a dog! And my dog would LOVE to get her paws on you!”

Isn’t it weird what we will do in a moment of disillusioned anger.

Tina turned off her super powers, reached for the knob again and got in the car. When she got home, she was so angry. She was shaken.

She kept thinking about what she should have said. What she should have done.

“Did you call the police?” I asked her.

“No,” she said.

“Did you burn out their eyes with your laser vision and chop their hands off at the wrists?”

“Yes, yes I did.”

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