It’s a beautiful Sunday in Lawrence, Kansas. You’re a proud mom – your little girl is graduating from KU today. Your husband and your 14-year-old daughter are along for the festivities.
Days don’t get much better than this. It’s eleven o’clock, the sky is blue, the temperature is 70. Downtown Lawrence was made for days like these. Graduation is several hours away – enough time for lunch and some shopping.
Your husband feeds the parking meter that doesn’t need feeding on Sundays, when you turn to see a shirtless fat man asleep on a bench outside The Replay Lounge.
Your brain swells with confusion at the visual bombardment.
The whole torso.
Just the gut.
The look on his face.
The areola.
The discarded wifebeater behind him.
The likely stash of bread tucked under his arm.
You stare at this fat man for what seems like hours before your husband nudges you down the sidewalk. You manage to put the man out of your head, thanks to clothing stores.
Two hours after the encounter, that obese guy enters your mind while you eat a Chocolate Caramel Heaven at Coldstone Creamery.
You wonder who that man was. Why was he so large and asleep with his shirt off on that bench?
Then, you begin to worry. You hope that man wasn’t dying on that bench. Did you even check to see if he was breathing? Surely you would’ve noticed his giant gut inflating, right? You don’t remember it. You are so panicked now that you are just barely going to be able to choke down the rest of your dense dessert.
On the walk back to the car, your stomach churns nervously. You can feel the fat man’s bench approaching from a block out. Would he be a corpse yet? Would his lifeless body be decomposing right on the bench? Or would emergency personnel have carted him away in some kind of extra-large ambulance?
When you arrive, you almost feel disappointed at the lack of police tape around the man’s bench.
You can’t even find an ass-crack moisture mark on the wood bench. Damn sun must’ve dried it up.
But the wifebeater remains.
Ten feet ahead, some guy is playing a flute made out of bottles. He’s just the distraction you need. You quickly pick up the wifebeater, smell it, and tuck it away in your purse. Time for graduation.
Great post, I had never noticed the bread or beater before, classic.
My only regret is not hanging around to catch people’s reactions to that thing.
he may not have a lot going for him, but he has a fantastic head of hair..
Indeed. Maybe the warmth emanating from that thing is what pushed him over the shirtless edge.