Splats

"You don't tug on Superman's cape
You don't spit into the wind
You don't pull the mask off the ol' Lone Ranger..."

-- Jim Croce, "You Don't Mess Around With Jim"

--

In the late summer, when the sidewalk below my fire escape was dry and free of leaves, I would climb out my window, sit on the brick ledge with my bare feet on the iron grate, watching whatever there was to watch--kids kicking plastic jugs like unpredictable soccer balls, streetwise panthers in chains and huge coats yelling into cell phones, packs of teenage (tweenage?) girls yapping and pock-pock-pocking along in heeled shoes--while I smoked cigarettes and called friends. I would complain about my new life in Cinci, smoke three or four sin sticks in one sitting, and spit off the escape in disdain. The little balls of saliva would fly down, down, down through the grates, and after unearthly delay, they would splat the sidewalk below my fire escape, which was dry and free of leaves. I spat often. My opinion of my surroundings: I lived in a spitoon.

Now, it is cold and raining. Big, dirty, British clouds underlit by orange streetlights, smothering smog hovering over the city like a predator, have brought darkness and chill to the land. The sidewalk below is wet and covered with leaves. The spoils of autumn. When I got back from Thanksgiving in Chi-Town tonight, I dug out an old pack of Pall-Malls, dug out an old cigarette, and returned to the fire escape, where I sat and shivered and rubbed my hands through my hair, massaging my scalp, and when I spat, the ball hit the ground with no splat. Just a whisper, a "th" sound in the night, lost in the sounds of drizzle and drip.

I left Chicago at noon, Central Time, and got back to Cinci at half-past seven, Eastern Time. A five-hour drive turned into a six-and-a-half-hour drive, thanks to the end of the pre-holidays holiday weekend. Seven times, I slowed to a complete stop on I-65 alone; twin columns of red brake lights in a foggy haze of gray was a sad sight. In Chicago, there were flurries, swipsy flakes melting on my windshield; in Indianapolis, the snow had turned to sleet, and when I pulled off the interstate for eats at a Rally's in Shelbyville, my car almost hydroplaned off the road; the last hour to Cincinnati was dismal and dark, and the cold rain came in shifts, each one heavier and more mystical than the last. I stopped ten minutes later at a McDonald's just to escape the claustrophobia of the trip. And to pee.

--

Right back into the shit, starting tomorrow: A morning show, an afternoon show, then a three-hour drive south for an overnight start to the December season. In the next three weeks, we have zero days off, assuming no schools close on account of the weather. I'm told this won't happen until January, when the hills become so thoroughly caked with ice and sledge that schoolbuses simply cannot stop on them. I can't imagine there is anything more terrifying for the bus-riding schoolkid than to be stuck in a large aluminum sled with no safety belts while the forces of Nature and Physics conspire for your demise.

--

My landlady has asked me to store some house plants in my bathroom. "The sun never shines in that window," I told her, to which she replied, "Oh, I know. These are shadow plants."

I looked up "shadow plants" because I was skeptical. Nothing pertinent, but there was a link to this amusing excerpt from Jeredith Merrin's poem "The Shadow Plant", which made me look up the definition of the word, "sough."

As luck would have it, to sough is "to make a rushing, rustling, or murmuring sound."

So there you have it: My spits no longer splat; they sough.