o I’m sitting here in Busboys and Poets (a coffee shop in D.C) just hammering away at the freelance work when the phone rings. Its an unavailable number, which, to me, is a good sign. A lot of corporate phone numbers read “unavailable” on my cell. I’ve spent a fair bit of time these past few weeks trying to get that word to appear on my telephone. I jumped up and outside onto the street.
it was indeed a company interested in my writing/web content services. And man, it feels good to be wanted. Even when you don’t want the thing that wants you, it just feels good, like the universe is giving you a wink and a nod.
So I’m standing out there on the street, cell on my head and thumb in my ear going on and on about my services when this pack of teenage girls comes hollering on by. I could hear them down the street, hence the thumb in the ear. Then the gaggle stopped right in front of me, right as I as talking to this recruiter. And it wasn’t just boisterous anymore.
Shit got HOT and onlookers circled up and went “OOOooOOoo daaaamn I wouldn’t take that if I was you!” There was about to be a girl fight right in front of me, during my phone interview, right in front of Busboys and Poets. Looked like it was gonna be a real weave-ripper, too.
I moved down the street and hands started flying. It got UGLY. “I’m so sorry, I’ll have to call you back, there’s a fight happening on the street,” I said, hanging up abruptly.
Then I didn’t know WHAT to do. I didn’t feel like I could break it up exactly, and the crowd was growing. I just stood there anxiously, an official grownup who is supposed to DO SOMETHING, just watching and fretting and hoping it didn’t roll into the street.
The fight went into the street. Traffic stopped. The crowd on the sidewalk grew, a bunch of nervous grown white people standing around, saying to each other “somebody should really do SOMETHING,” but none of us knew what.
The fight rolled across 14th and sort of evaporated like a dust devil that just quits all of a sudden and then it was just us nervous citizens on the sidewalk. One of those nervous citizens was Cindy Sheehan and a lot of the other citizens were part of her peacemaking brigade.
I know that her thing is more stopping the war in Iraq instead of breaking up teenage girlfights, but I thought she could have tried SOMETHING. Sort of like how on an island full of castaways a veterinarian delivers babies and takes out swollen appendixes every month or so. But you know, she’s another nervous grownup just like me too and neither one of us really had a clue.
It was just me and Cindy and this big weird girlfight on the street this afternoon and there wasn’t any point to anything at all.
