Ghetto Theatre
8.6.6
I dropped Autumn off at work around 4:00 pm, today. As we pulled up to the Papa Murphy's, I noticed a rather large group of people gathering outside the Burger King across the lot. Most of them had formed a large circle and were cheering and yelling. Two of these youths were at the center of all this attention. I didn't have anything better to do, so I joined the other rubberneckers throughout the parking lot in watching this event play out.
The boys circled around each other, yelling and sometimes raising their fists in the air. You couldn't really call it a fight, as not a single punch was thrown. Without intervention, it seemed as though this dance would go on forever.
Suddenly, I saw a girl in a Burger King uniform appear from inside. She pushed her way through the group, and began walking in my general direction. I turned my attention towards her. Why was she walking this way?
Her asphalt hike eventually ended at a shiny green Oldsmobile that was parked two spaces down from me. Sitting in this car was another girl who looked on as the first police cars arrived. I listened as Burger King Girl began to yell at her. I was only able to piece together bits and pieces of the story as most of it was told between spastic bouts of angry expletives.
As far as I could tell, one of the not-quite-boxers had actually gone into Burger King and "broken up a bunch of shit." Because of this, Burger King Girl had just been fired. Exactly how and why the fight had then started is unknown to me...but I was able to ascertain that it had something to do with a girl.
Ah, of course...a girl. Women have ways of driving even rational men to acts of insanity, don't they? Of course, that's not to say that this was a rational person she was talking about. He seemed more like your average pissed off gang member with something to prove.
Oh! Now he was face down on the ground with a cop holding his hands behind his back. As the handcuffs were placed around his wrists, hoots and hollers resounded from the circle of kids around them. I would like to be able to say that these screams resulted from excitement in seeing this little douchebag taken off the streets. Sadly, they seemed to represent only a disdain for the officers who had broken up this Sunday afternoon entertainment.
Eventually, I tired of watching this ghetto theatre. A beer or two was starting to sound pretty good, so I headed into a little redneck dive bar a few doors down.
As I sipped on my Corona, an older man started a conversation with me. He asked me a few questions about what had transpired outside, which I happily answered. After hearing the story he opined out loud, "Sounds like it was a bunch of blacks to me." The unfortunate thing was that I couldn't tell this man that he was incorrect in his assumption. Instead, I simply shrugged at him, excused myself from the conversation, and played a quick game of solo pool.
It was the worst game of pool I've ever played.
