Small Town Grievances 43: Your bathroom cooperation is dearly appreciated

Small Town Grievances 43: Your bathroom cooperation is dearly appreciated
 

• Supporting the sciences: Mayor has announced a new stipend for an out of town professional to travel to his home to determine if the beetle he has under a jar will calm down enough to let him play with it if he leaves it long enough, or whether that ship sailed after he kept it awake for a day testing which kind of Coke it found most displeasing.
   

• ​Tony G. who tends the veteran’s memorial at the park requests that whoever keeps leaving crystals in the soil of the picnic garden kindly knock it off as it’s making the ghosts of the valorous dead go completely fucking haywire.
  He claims that the regular dreams in which he is visited by the spirit of his great uncle the blown-up lieutenant feel off — instead of appearing in his stately smouldering artillerist’s uniform and speaking mournfully of the need to keep powder dry, he wears a polo with a poorly proportioned collar and overly long city jeans with the back hems all frayed and ugly from being stepped on too much. The ghost carries a late-model Blackberry and seems bewitched by its library of piercing ringtones, and when he brings company it is no longer his valiant exploded comrades, some of whom are only a torso mind you, but instead by a quiet group of young women with haircuts of a kind you see “at those conventions where Disney animals come to know each other intimately on stage”.
  Tony G. says that if the situation can’t be resolved by the weekend he’s prepared to cancel the live screening of Monday’s episode of History: Revealed!, even though he thinks they’re up to the one about the secrets of Hitler’s terrible Insects.
   

• Town is buzzing following a rare visit from federal law enforcement, around a dozen of whom turned up Thursday morning in a smart-looking bus on unannounced business. The visiting officers enjoyed the generous lunchtime buffet at Heavenly Beef Emperor, where they were treated to views by the newly reopened thrashing koi pond, reportedly much less distressing now that they’ve thinned themselves out a little.
  Shift Manager Vivienne F. became quite passionate on the karaoke speaker honouring in an impromptu address, in which she thanked the officers for giving their blood for our liberties, though if they could please observe the restaurant’s policy of not all going to the bathrooms at once due to the pipe noise still being enough to set off even the lesser-traumatised early-bird veterans, and finally declaring the restaurant would rename its pre-dinner menu “Brave Cop’s Solice” in commemoration of the visit. Hours later, after the government bus had returned to take the officers on, a straggler was spotted sitting forlornly on the new local history bench that bears a plaque commemorating the Great Dog-Food Factory Detonation, clearly holding back tears as he played on his phone. Whether he was weeping for being forgotten by his colleagues or for the historical tragedy wasn’t clear, though anyone who’s looked at the inscription work on the plaque will tell you it takes some imagination to realise it’s even referring to a real event, let alone one of the darkest moments of our history.
   

• ​Later we found out what the police had been here for: to arrest Laurie T., the new dental assistant at Honest Mouth who’s an intern despite being probably close to 80 years old from the way he gets in and out of his car. Some student journalists who drove down from the community college in Hindenburg said they were following a rumour that Laurie T. is some kind of infamous disgraced body surgeon called “The BBL Maniac”, god help us. 
  They got some good footage of Honest Mouth main dentist Nathan H. sweating, unable to answer why Laurie T. was allowed to perform dentistry despite his barely transferable skill set, other than to say that the human body is a divine hedge maze and even the most learned of us are still just aphids blind among its roses.
  Hard to argue with Nathan H. on that one. A long time ago we had to send my little brother for tests in the city after the fingers of one hand began fusing together like the fin of a water mammal. While the specialist determined he was just lacquering it over with farmers glue when he thought nobody was looking, he said we were right to take him out of school for the year all the same. What if he was becoming something? What if it meant a new age? A beginning?

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