Why Are You Doing That?
This morning Caleb and I drove through the Battery Tunnel to get to Battery Park, where Caleb wanted to do some research for a chair competition. I was going to stay in bed and read the New Yorker, but then I realized I was mired in the middle of an article about Obama and big donors, and decided that I didn’t want to read after all.
So I threw on an outfit that made me look like one of those children’s books where you can flip tabs, and change the character’s outfit. For my head, I chose a USA gymnast. In the middle, I chose a child wearing a sweater. For the bottom, I did a slutty Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I knew that once we got through the Battery Tunnel, to Battery Park, we wouldn’t be able to find street parking, and that we would quickly return from whence we came, without me ever having to leave the car. Caleb knew it too, which is why he let me leave the house looking like I got dressed in three different cartoons.
We had Franke with us, who kept on trying to jump out the window. To let her burn off some energy, we decided, on the way home—we didn’t find parking, obviously—to take her to Valentino Park, in Red Hook. There, slightly retarded people with a death wish hang fishing poles, and catch things out of the New York Harbor while at the same time enjoying unobstructed views of the Statue of Liberty.
I say slightly retarded because I assume you have to have a low IQ to eat shit from the waters there, given all of the crap (literally) that gets dumped into it from the city. Or maybe the fishies are delicious, who knows.
(Is it bad that I just used the word retarded? Mea culpa, forgive. I mean it literally though.)
On the end of the dock, we encountered a number of such fisherman, all of whom were loving life. We paused alongside them, and watched as some bottom feeder kneeboarded his way across the unobstructed view, and into the Buttermilk Channel.
“Gross,” Caleb said.
“That looks like fun times,” I responded.
Suddenly, a fisherman let go of his reel, right in the direction of the kneeboarder. “Oh shit,” he screamed, as if he had just suddenly noticed him.
I regretfully inform you that he did not catch the kneeboarder with his hook, although he came pretty close. Fortunately for him, there were plenty of other body parts to fish out of the water. Presumably delicious.
