Worthwhile in Normal entries

G and now Florentine and perhaps others are doing these one word prompt things. I could cut and paste the link here, but I won’t. You need to go read; I’ve yet to see a bad example.

Today’s word was worthwhile.

I haven’t decided whether I want to do the sixty second prompt yet. My keyboard has Asperger’s, Tourette’s, ashes and I think it’s coming down with encephalitis. Hmmm, maybe they changed the name of encephalitis, like maniac depressive to bi-polar. I don’t know and I’m running far too low on shits and fucks to give any away superfluously. Hell, boy, that’s a pick em up truck of big ass words.

I do have a worthwhile story. Oh, that’s misdirection. I have a story wherein the word is a central to what passes as a plot. Real life is much more difficult to really have much of a plot mostly because once real life reaches a real resolution you are too dead to type. Not trying to be morbid, or I’m not trying very hard to be morbid, it’s just that anything shy of a biography non-fiction is going to start in the middle and end in the middle. What about WWII dawg? Well, junior, first off show me a short journal entry that can do WWII with all the salient battles and alliances and if that story was over why does the US still have a military base in Germany? Sorry, smart ass tangent.

Ok, my worthwhile story;

So I’m walking Herschel in the gloaming because we both really need the walk. Perhaps I have never said this, I sure haven’t on prosebox, but I never had to walk my dogs for pooping or peeing purposes, had a big backyard always open to them for that, though, of course, every male dog is compelled to pee on peeing landmarks, e,g, the trees, bushs, telephone poles that all the other dogs have peed on. I’m sure fire hydrants are a big draw, we lived in unincorporated Clackamas County; we didn’t have fire hydrants or our own police force or, you know, sidewalks.

So I’m walking down the street with my happy hundred pounds of rippling red pit-bull, and we’re going the long way because we have things to think about, and we pass one of the shitty little six plexs, and, Ahhh… to describe Portland; even in my little lawless neighborhood a shitty little six-plex is hidden behind wisteria, bougainvillea, red plum and cherry blossom. I mean what was once considered the slum (it’s since been gentrified, we were never considered a slum because technically we didn’t exist, though we were the real and true felony flats) had Victorian homes with gables and wild roses, no ugly rows of tenements, gray and chalky and harsh against the skyline.

Anyhow, we pass these wannbe cholos shooting hoop in the street with one of those standalone poles with backboard and hoop, I’m smoking a pipe and Herschel is all looking like the poster child for the great and noble pit and/or an animal of mass destruction depending on the beholder and their feelings about the breed. I take the pipe from my mouth and nod, the one who isn’t staring at Herschel and giving us a wide berth nods back, I put my pipe back in my mouth and we walk on the gold of sunset lighting Herschel up like a saint, and a bit further the gloaming has faded to dark.

We come back the same way because to one degree or the other all dogs are a little OCD and Hersch was the doggiest dog ever to grace this pitstop to eternity, and he liked routine. Yes he liked adventure too as long as afterwards we got routine. This was our stomping grounds; there was a right way and a wrong way to do things. Hersch and I always did them the same way, right or wrong. So I’m passing the shitty little six-plex, now hidden completely behind the spidery arms of cherry and plum and sinewy rope of wisteria, and from the darkness the even blacker shadows from the absence of light some baby wannabe cholos says “Ey main, whyontcho do sumthin’ wort wild”.

I’m not trying to make fun of his accent, I’m trying, and not well I might add, to explain why I had to think so hard and why I had to translate worthwhile from wort wild. In the thinking it became my favorite insult ever, if, in fact, it was an insult at all. The kid obviously wasn’t going to show enough of himself to be within Herschel’s sight (although dogs have shitty night vision, their keen sense of smell doesn’t change with the quality of light. Thing is Herschel spoke neither English nor Spanish and certainly not heavily accented English, you ask me he was trying to play cholos and was culturally as much an Oregonian as Hersch or I. Why? Because that’s a wacky insult. Anyhow, all Hersch would have done is sniff the guy for treats and then smile a drooly smile that would give him the opportunity to go get some treats were he so inclined and, you know, off leash).

Why don’t I do something wort wild indeed. A profound question at worst, at best a lifestyle. I hate to disappoint dude, though I would love to be living in that shitty little six-plex round about now and dude probably is so fuck him, but I haven’t quite managed that in general. I mean I came here to do something wort wild, it’s powerfully slow going and like life the end of this tale is a hard road. Huh, maybe it’s life that’s a hard road and the end is a cul de sac. Maybe I should drop the metaphor and go with something about fat ladies singing.