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"Shit," thought Joe. "They're coming." As he hurdled over the side of his
weathered Breezy Point Two above-ground pool in a desperate attempt to
escape, Joe caught his foot on the sturdy six inch toprail. Taken in slow
motion, his decent might have resembled some deranged form of modern
performance art; water droplets peeled off massive rolls of flesh as Joe
plummeted towards the ground in his pink speedo. Joe decided to remain
philosophical about his state of being, and spent his time in flight
wondering why he had gone in for the rugged toprail add-on instead of just
buying a set of diving sticks for his kids. Or maybe some scuba goggles.
His offspring always complained that the chlorine content of the pool was
too high and that, as a result, their eyes always hurt after going in for
a dip. Joe blamed the bright yellow hue of the neighbor's house for this
ailment. He said it reflected off of the water and into one's eyes
whenever one attempted to take a refreshing interlude from the pressures
of modern society in the fluid solace of the pool; that glorious,
space-efficient man-made womb. His kids wouldn't believe him. "Must be all
the lies their mother tells them about me," he thought. Joe could hardly
blame them.
"Hell," he said to himself. "If that sniveling bitch had gotten me young
enough, she probably could have even convinced me that I was a worthless
liar." It suddenly dawned on Joe that the laws of gravity were about to
serve him his sentence, and that all of this shoulda-woulda-coulda
nonsense was getting him nowhere very, very fast. However, this train of
thought was violently hurled from its tracks before it could even hope to
reach its logical destination when Joe's head made contact with his dusty,
unkempt lawn.
----------
Joe woke up in Heaven, and realized it hurt his eyes. He didn't want to
sit up, but he felt some strange urge to and worried that if he didn't he
might be disobeying the will of God. Though nothing he did was ever his
fault, Joe had enough answering to do to the Big Guy In The Sky as it was.
He was a constant victim of circumstance.
When Joe sat up, he was disappointed. Damn. They didn't have sterile
hospital air in the promised land, of this Joe was certain. He looked
around. No one in sight. The room was empty, except for a tangle of
medical equipment next to him and a small table in one corner of the room,
on which rested a perspiring plastic jug of what had once been ice water,
a disposable plastic cup, and a rather official looking document. Maybe it
was that fishing license Joe had applied for six months ago. The table was
just close enough to allow Joe to reach out and grab its corner. He
pulled. It inched slightly closer. Joe hadn't noticed how weak he was
until now. Another pull, another inch. After about five more tugs, the
table was close enough that he could reach out and touch the official
looking document. He grabbed at the edge and yanked it in his direction.
Now that it was within range, Joe shuffled the papers off the desk and
read the authoritative letterhead. Odd. He'd thought that the Department
Of Fish And Game was in charge of issuing fishing licenses, not the local
police. "Wait. Local police?" thought Joe. It was then that all became
strikingly clear. Joe wished that it had stayed blissfully opaque.
Joe had suddenly realized that the combination of personal distaste for
the color of your neighbor's house and a high blood alcohol level did not
give you the legal right to spray paint various threatening passages from
the Old Testament across the side of your neighbor's garishly colored
house at three in the morning, despite the fact that it seemed like a
righteous thing to do at the time. His second revelation was every bit as
profound; Joe noticed to his horror that the slogan "overpaint you're hous
or be murded in te nigte" could easily be interpreted by many judges to be
a threat of physical assault, even when put into context. Most people did
not understand what a real pooling experience was like, and therefore, did
not understand the frustration of having it ruined by the offensive color
of your neighbor's house. "Philistines." thought Joe.
As it was highly improbable that any group of twelve randomly selected
citizens would contain seven or more connoisseurs of fine pooling and
cheap liquor, Joe began to think of ways in which to justify his actions
to the jury. As he was unable to manage this task, he began to contemplate
the potential evidence which the local prosecutor may have had against
him. Though he wasn't in any way certain, Joe did not remember wearing any
gloves. Neither did he remember properly disposing of his boots, or even
bringing empty spray cans with him for disposal at a later date. The only
thing he could be sure of is that the day after his crime spree, he had
awaken in his bed, miraculously un-hungover, and had felt like a brief
sojourn in the pool. He had tromped through the thick teal shag carpet in
the living room, across the threshold of the sliding glass door (which he
would have walked into if not for the large number of cracks from a
previous drunken escapade), over the roll-out patio and up the ladder of
his big, beautiful vat of pristine water. He had immersed himself fully in
his glistening sanctuary, lapping up the morning sun while suspended in
liquid perfection. Then there were sirens, those harbingers of conscience,
reminding him what he'd done. Moments later, he had begun his short,
downward flight from the law. The piece of paper in his hands was an
official court summons.
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It was a year after the incident. The sirens had apparently been involved
in a high-speed
chase completely unrelated to Joe. His ex-wife, three kids and their
"replacement daddy" (who also happened to be a cop) had arrived that
morning to find him lying on the ground, unconscious, neighbor's defaced
house looming in the background. Apparently during his fall, Joe had
somehow managed to knock down the flimsy fence that divided his yard from
his neighbor's. Needless to say, Officer Nosy had taken one look at his
position in relation to that of the vandalized house and had assumed the
worst. While awaiting the arrival of an ambulance, the heroic officer of
the law had dusted some prints off of Joe's martini shaker (which Joe had
regrettably left sitting on the kitchen counter, uncleaned and half full)
for further analysis after they had gotten a set of prints from the scene
of the crime.
Joe had spent 2 weeks in the hospital. After he had been discharged (and
given a prescription for some rather potent painkillers after claiming
that the stress had triggered arthritis), he had been immediately tried on
charges of vandalism, public inebriation, and assault. Fortunately, one of
Joe's bar buddies was a good lawyer and managed to convince the jury that
Joe had simply been drunk, walked through the fence and, seeing the
graffiti, decided to touch it to see if it were real. Since there was no
significant evidence to prove otherwise, Joe was let off the judicial
hook. Apparently you couldn't dust prints off of spray can nozzles. Since
his lawyer had alleged that Joe spent the entire duration of his "heavy
intoxication" in the privacy of his own back yard, he wasn't even found
guilty on the public inebriation charge. The jury did, however, order him
to rebuild the fence. Having no other suspects, the police were forced to
put the case on the back burner. They have yet to apprehend the
perpetrator(s) of this violent assault on the residence of Joe's
aesthetically challenged neighbors.
"Don't you worry, Mr. Judge" thought Joe as he descended the steps of the
courthouse. "I'll rebuild that fence nice and tall and sturdy, so that I
will never have to see that bastard's crappy house again. Right after I
take a long, elysian soak in the my precious, precious pool."
Joe knew that sometimes, one must simply be philosophical about things.
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