The scientist was walking home, after dark on a spring evening, a Monday. This walking business had become routine with him. Awhile ago, he might have wondered how come he had so little company, the price of gasoline being what it was in Berkeley, California. And of parking, if you could find a spot. But though his colleagues complained at every opportunity, and cursed the governments that they blamed for the prices and the scarcities, they always got out of their cars in the morning and back into them at quitting time. There was always some excuse. So he punched the Walk buttons at the intersections and watched while the cars stormed past until they recognized that there was a red light in their way and they halted with bad grace to let the pedestrian pass, and he had stopped wondering about it all.

He was too busy anyway. The walking gave him time to think. There was plenty to think about, what with the instrument installation in Maine that he was trying to oversee from California, and the scholarly papers that he was trying to write, and the grants that needed to be written to get money to pay for the research that needed to be done, and all the wheedling and cajoling and occasional god-damning he had to endure, as donor and recipient, to get and keep people on task. Himself, most importantly. He couldn’t understand why it seemed that all the people he passed had cell phones glued to their ears, or, thanks to the new, practically invisible headsets, walked down the street looking like they were talking to God. As often as not, he shut his phone off. He needed to separate himself from the “need it yesterday� types, to get his thoughts in order, to keep his protein-brain calendar functional.

He was so intent on matters relating to electron microscope specifications that he took a wrong turn and didn’t notice it until two blocks later, when he had almost reached the main thoroughfare, Telegraph Avenue, walking at nearly a 90 degree angle to his destination. He turned south on Telegraph intending to turn west again at the next intersection and thus get back on the road home.

On his way he passed a bike shop. He had passed this shop several times in daylight and thought he knew it well. It featured a roadside display of bicycles, used ones, $99 and up, a lineup of the dated and the unfashionable hoping to attract some sympathetic, or footsore, soul. He had not been one of those souls. At this hour, this Land of Misfit Cycles had taken all its $99 specials inside, locked away from the street people and the undergraduate partiers and the scientists walking themselves home, and it presented only dark windows to the world. He cast his eye quickly over the dormant shop to make sure all was well - and he paused to inspect an orange glint that bounced off an unexpected object in the window.

It was a skateboard. Set on its end with its wheels against the window. Actually there were four boards, in the same position, side by side, but it was the orange one from which the light came. The board was not all orange, it was mottled over with stickers and signs from various sources: rock bands, head shops. Like the $99 cycles, it was used. Its rollers were scuffed, the stickers frayed, the edges of the board worn. It had seen a lot of feet, and ramps, and staircase banisters.

He wondered how it and its neighbors came to be there. “Probably estate sales�. The analytical side of his mind, which had been busy calculating instrument facility floor space, was disgruntled at being interrupted, and assaulted the cause without mercy. “One of those kids rolling down Bancroft without helmets or joint pads who wiped out and they scraped his remains off the side of a bus. Dangerous. You know better.� He had always known better. He had been told to stay away from dangerous things, things that could hurt. He had never mastered the skateboard. He couldn’t even remember ever being on a skateboard. He had gone to college instead. And graduate school. And a life in academia. Where he learned all the myriad ways he could get hurt by sitting still.

Home was still a block away, and late was getting later. He started walking. But he couldn’t help imagining that he was riding instead. And executing a switch frontside nosegrind 180 out or three on a bus stop bench before packing it in for the night.

   - O Ceallaigh

Copyright © 2006 Felloffatruck Publications. All wrongs deplored.

All opinions are mine as a private citizen.