About Me

Vancouver, Washington
Old. That about says it all. Gray is good, too. Affinity for facial hair. Unfortunate affinity for back hair. Loves writing...but it is hard so it often doesn't happen. Happiest at home with my family. Married my best friend.

Monday, June 30, 2008

Untitled II

He had been quietly moving through these halls with either a mop, or a broom, boxes of toilet paper, or a giant trash can on wheels for 10 years. Before that, he unobtrusively attended classes in English and Philosophy at the Community college for 3 years. Before that, he had walked these same high school halls. He walked them in much the same way he was walking them now, but rather than cleaning tools and garbage, he carried textbooks and a ratty 3 ring binder, once covered in purple fabric, now sweatstained, inkstained, potato chip oil stained, and most holey (to him, most holy). Now, when even noticed by either the students of the faculty, he was Mr. Cloud. In high school, he was Slobber the Clod or, if anyone wanted to poke fun at his obsession with "The Highlander", he was Slobber McClod.
He was never quite sure where the idea for "slobber" came from. He didn't slobber--he rarely opened his mouth. To him, it made no sense,and, becasue he rarely spoke to anyone so had no friends to ask about the name, he never found out that he was "Slobber" because his pillow combed his oily hair, his oily and pimply face was oily and pimply ALL of the time, and his jeans and t-shirt never changed. The other students didn't know that he really did have several pairs of jeans and several t-shirts--because he didn't realize he portrayed "slobbiness", he never explained to anyone that he had 4 pairs of jeans, all roughly the same color and 4 t-shirts, all black with a gothic lettering of "The Highlander" superimposed over a claymore.
Oddly enough, because the t-shirt had been his own design and he could get them screenprinted almost anywhere, he continued to wear blue jeans and black t-shirt to this day, now hidden beneath his gray coveralls. Had any of the current faculty who had also been students at the school with "Slobber" known what he wore beneath his coveralls, they may have passed the legacy of "Slobber McClod" down to the current student body. But, they didn't know, so Slobber was simply Mr. Cloud.
He had been born Conner Cloud of a mother frightened of her own shadow and a father who felt so very grandiose that he tried to overshadow everything. Thus, his mother was in a constant state of fear and his father was in a constant state of wind and bluster, making sure that his shadow covered everything within his "domain". That he considered his domain to be wherevver he was at the moment was odd, as reality placed his domain in a broken down single-wide on the very edge of town, camped like a gypsy trailer on the 10 acre plot of land which was the sole legacy left by Conner's Grandfather Cloud, a man also given to boasting (and, to make the boasting bigger and more unlikely, given also to the daily overconsumption of cheap Scotch).

1 comment:

Lisa Sofia said...

I love Slobber McCloud. I hope to hear more about him. The invisible man in the gray overalls walking the school hallways is a fascinating character study!