Nurse the Hate: Got To Clean The Gutters

 

Did you hear about that guy Tim I used to work with?  He’s in the hospital.  They thought it was covid, but it turned out it was something else.  They can’t figure it out.  They thought it was like lupus or something like that.  Isn’t lupus the thing that makes your skin go hard like a statue and freezes up your internal organs like cement?  Shit, I can’t remember.  Anyway, this guy is still in the hospital.  He’s been in a coma for four months.  He’s just laying there shitting through a tube.  His wife can’t even go see him because of the covid.  So he’s just there by himself day after day, not getting better and not getting worse.  He’s just laying there with no idea what is going on.  I just thought of him out of the blue when I was thinking about some work I gotta do around the house.  I have to go out and clean those gutters.

Did I tell you about this guy that lives down the street from me?  He’s wound up tight like one of those terriers.  You know those dogs that can’t chill the fuck out and are always in your face?  That’s like this guy.  He spends most days complaining about how he’s getting a raw deal from some other guy to anyone that he can get to listen.  He chews your ear off about how he’s always the one getting screwed.  Then as soon as you walk away, he starts talking shit about you to whoever else wanders by.  This fucking guy is a piece of work.  He’s one of those guys that goes out of his way to tell you, “I’m not someone that calls the cops on people”, and then tells you five different stories about how he called the cops on people.  It’s like he’s talking to you but he’s really trying to convince himself that he did the right thing ratting those other people out to the cops.  I could tell you all about this fucking guy, but I really need to go out and clean those gutters.

I was walking in the woods the other day and I found an old nickel.  It was from 1936.   Something told me to look down and boom, there it was.  It was the craziest thing.  I was on this trail that used to be part of an old electric railroad line.  You can still feel the cinders crunch under your feet.  I guess the thing went out of business in The Depression.  They ripped out the old rails to sell as scrap and just left all the rest. Most people have no idea that an old train line used to run right through there.   I bet that coin I found was someone’s fare.  Probably fell out of their pocket or something.  After all those years, and I found it.  Crazy, right?  I can show you where I found it, but I really gotta go out and clean those gutters.  

Did I tell you what happened the other morning?  I got up and and it was still dark and sorta misty.  You know how that mist rolls off the Lake sometimes, right?  It’s spooky like a horror movie.  So I walked out to my car to get that nickel I was telling you about.  I left it in the ashtray and I didn’t want to forget about it.  I’d be pissed if I handed it away on a takeout coffee or something.  Anyway, I am out in the driveway and I see this dog looking thing, but it’s moving weird, shuffling along like it has a fucked up back or something.  It looks like a scrawny German Shepard.  So I’m staring at it and it hits me.  That’s a coyote!  I see those signs in the park, “beware of coyotes”, but I’ve never seen one.  I heard some stories about how a coyote ate someone’s dog and shit like that, but it’s never someone I actually know.  It’s always one of those stories like “my sister’s stylist’s friend” or whatever.  It’s like when we were in school and someone in this other school far away killed themselves and all the other kids in the class got A’s in the class.  It was never someone you knew personally, but yet everyone knows someone that knows someone that it happened to.  That’s why I’m so psyched that I finally see this coyote.  Then I’m staring at it for a minute and I see it sniffing around the streetlight and I get a better look at it.  It’s just a dog.  Man, I was really disappointed.  Oh well.  I’ll probably see one sooner or later.  Hey, I really need to run.  I got to go clean those gutters.