THE LANDING

the Landing
back in my college days
I spent a year-
no, wait
I wasn’t in college
and it wasn’t a year
it was everybody ELSE
that was in college
and it was more like four months
but anyway
I lived in this mad house
where most of the tenants
were drunk all the time
and the ones that weren’t
were in the kitchen
carving up 200 lb pigs
or in the basement
smoking weird herbs
and hiding under beds
the house was just up the street
from a river
with a parking lot
where people parked
to go boating or fishing
or to hide out for a while
when things weren’t going so well.
on the riverbank
at the edge of the parking lot
seagulls gathered in droves
and for some reason
this really pissed me off
I couldn’t handle the fact
that while I was busting my ass all day
climbing up ladders
and painting houses
and dealing with the weather
the employees
and the customers
these seagulls were just standing around
watching the time go by.
so one day
when driving home with a friend
I drove past our driveway
down to the parking lot
and I gunned my old truck across the sand
right up to the riverbank
honking my horn
and screaming out the window
“gahhhh! Get outta here! Ahhhh!”
the seagulls took flight
and I did a couple donuts
pumping my fist in the air
then drove back up the road
back into the driveway and home.
my friend asked me what it was all about
and I told him about the seagulls
how they’d been getting on my nerves
and how I’d finally snapped
he didn’t say a thing
and we left it at that
but then the next time he was driving home
and I was in his passenger seat
he drove past the driveway
down to the parking lot
and together we yelled out the windows
and did donuts
and scared the seagulls away again
and this soon became our habit
that every chance we could
we’d drive down there and scare away the seagulls
now six years have past
my friend is thirty years old
and I’m less than a year behind
but sometimes we still get together
maybe on some errand to fix the front axle of a jeep
or get falafels in that college town
and we make it a point
to drive down past our old driveway
back into the parking lot
to do a couple donuts
and remind those seagulls
that we’re still around
and we’re still not happy
about them sitting on that riverbank
all day and all night
just wasting their time away