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I'm
standing in a cash only line with a bottle of discount Plymouth Gin at
my favorite liquor store in Manhattan. It’s a big discount place
on Broadway, very popular for all varieties of folk, so I'm not surprised
when the woman behind the counter asks for some ID. Having never seen
a Maine State driver's license before, she fires off some questions. Date
of birth, address on the card, how to spell BackNippen, she's still not
convinced.
"Don't you have anything else with a picture?"
"Well, I can tell you this. When I got home from my eighth-grade
homecoming dance, OJ Simpson was cruisin’ toward Orange County on
my Magnavox television set."
That night, over half of the country watched as traffic jammed between
LA and Disneyland, helicopters swarming with cameras, a procession of
police in pursuit, and poor Juice with a gun to his head.
I didn’t have a fucking clue who that guy was, nor could I point
out a passing Ford Bronco, but that night I forgot all about the crummy
time I had, and watched on, alone in my bedroom.
It's amazing what people will do for attention, and I can speak from experience.
As people cram themselves on this planet like zoo animals, we will continue
our search for the great white Bronco, a pursuit that often ends in a
good old murder-suicide. Just look at the way zoo animals pander to their
audience. An elephant ate itself to death in a San Diego zoo because it
enjoyed swallowing pocket change to entertain the tourists.
Hell, you can even make a liger when enough people are watching.
Far as we know, this whole crisis in Lebanon could be Iran's Bronco, as
Iraq seems to be our own. And feeling this way, believing that its only
a matter of time before a pair of handcuffs and a civil trial, with an
expired driver's license from another state, why do I still want a white
Bronco?
Maybe it's because that night I was a portly long-haired brat with a poor
education of the opposite sex, or it could be because I was the youngest
in the family. The only thing I can say for sure, is that from my parents
to myself, we went from an Apollo to a Ford, and I think that's for the
best. [B]
JEFF BURNS
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