Condren paused from his effort to artfully and carefully cover his old name on his autographed Stormtrooper action figure to push his birth-control glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. In so doing, he put a black dot right in the center of the masking tape holding the frame together. When he was known as Xavier, he was always self conscious about how geeky his name sounded. Sure, there were worse names that could have been bestowed upon him, but Xavier just screamed, "GEEK!" With a name like that, he was destined to spend eternity in a cubicle chasing semi-colons during the day, and fixing computers for his extended family with no expectations of appreciation during the night.
Deciding on a new name was a no-brainer. When Condren, then Xavier, was 10 years old, he sought out to meet and obtain the autograph of his favourite Stormtrooper, Tim Condren. This autographed Stormtrooper was Condren's prized possession for the next twenty years. When Tim Condren passed away on the nineteenth day of the seventh month in the 2006th year, the choice was made. Xavier legally changed his name to Condren. Sure, die-hard, hard-core Star Wars fans would recognize the name and they would still be able to label him as a geek, but these were his peers. His people. His homies. It was cool if they thought he was a geek.
With a few carefully placed strokes with a black Sharpie, "Use the force, Xavier - Tim Condren" became "Use the force, Condren - Tim Condren" and it looked pretty good. Satisfied with his effort, Condren placed the action figure, still in the box, back onto the shelf in its rightful place at the left hand of Darth Vader. Stepping back, Condren took a moment to appreciate his star wars action figure collection which took up the entire 18-foot wall from floor to ceiling. Each piece was carefully placed according to their order of appearance in the six movie series. At the far right on the last shelf, there stood a
George Lucas action figure next to a
George Lucas Stormtrooper action figure the former of the two suffered cigarette burn marks on the soles of its feet. These burns were applied as a direct result of Jar Jar Binks appearance.
Condren moved across the cold concrete floor to his computer desk and sat down. Almost without thought, he moved his bottle of hand lotion to the side and placed his hand on his wireless optical mouse. The moment it moved, his screen saver disappeared and Conden's favourite joke appeared as his background image was revealed. "How many Stormtroopers does it take to change a light bulb? 35. One to change the bulb and 34 to die needlessly." That one always made him smile. At that very moment the phone rang. Condren clicked twice and answered the phone with the computer microphone and speakers.
"Condren speaking..." broke the silence.
"Hi, darling. Are you home?" cooed the female voice.
"Yes. Where else would I be?"
"Please come upstairs and wash up for dinner, then." said Condren's mother.
"I'm not hungry."
"You have to eat."
"I'll have pizza at the D&D game tonight."
"You'll waste away to nothing. Come up and eat."
"Carol, I'm busy."
And with that, Condren hung up with another click of the mouse. He checked his email, browsed his
favourite site to see if there were any new comments worth reading. Nothing there.
Nothing new on Drudge.
Nothing new on Jeff.com (known to others as Fark)
Nothing new on moveon.org
Condren's browser finds its way to thehun out of boredom and habit. Having harvested Internet pr0n from newsgroups early-on and then from torrents and sites like thehun, Condren's impression of sex, women, and what women want and expect is quite warped. This may be why he has never had a girlfriend. Or, it may be because he grew self conscious about his given name believing that nobody would ever give him the respect that he deserved for his in-depth knowledge on a wide variety of topics. We may never know. Instinctively, Condren reached for the hand lotion and moved his mouse over to the left side of the keyboard. However, this wasn't what he wanted to do so he got up from the computer and flopped onto the bed and closed his eyes for a few minutes. While he lay there, he said his new name to himself over and over believing that it had a mesmerizing melody when chanted slow and low. Condren Thomas Nader. Condren Thomas Nader. Condren Thomas Nader. Condren Thomas Nader. And then he drifted off to sleep.
Condren woke with a start several hours later. The phone was ringing, but it took him a moment to realize what exactly that sound was that broke his slumber. He stumbled across the room and reached for the imitation pulse-dial retro-phone sitting on his night stand. He sounded incredibly alert when he said, "Condren speaking" into the mouthpiece.
"Is this the Nader residence?" said the woman on the other end.
"Yes. It is. May I ask who's calling?"
"My name is Traci Cunningham. I went to high school with Xavier. Do you know how I can get hold of him?"
The panic washed over Condren and he almost couldn't answer.
"Th th th this is Xavier." was his eventual utterance.
Condren checked the binary clock next to the phone. 10:30 pm. He had all but missed the D&D game. He was more interested in why this voice from the past would be calling him. Had she drunk dialed him? Was she looking for money? Whisky Tango Foxtrot?
Traci explained that she had been going through her yearbook and she remembered the fun that she and Condren, then Xavier, had shared in the literary club and math club. Fond memories, it would seem, for both of them. Condren and Traci talked for almost 3 hours before Traci got up the nerve to invite Condren over to talk in person. Condren couldn't believe his ears. Of course he would love to go and see Traci and talk in person!
Traci tried to give Condren directions and Condren tried looking up the directions using mapquest, but Traci's house was in a brand new mega subdivision that had not yet been mapped and it was in a part of the city that Condren had never had a reason to visit. Traci offered to meet Condren at a spot familiar to both of them about 3 miles from her house. In fact, the bar where they agreed to meet was a familiar landmark to everyone in the city.
They stood outside the bar in the dimly lit parking lot for a few minutes discussing directions to Traci's house. After Condren assured her that he could get there, they each hopped into their cars and set off. As they drove to her house, she blew through a light that Condren couldn't make.
Condren, having the highway fatality statistics tucked away in the back of his mind, has always been a conservative driver. Even at almost two a.m., he wasn't about to run a red light. Besides, he thought he knew the directions pretty well because they had gone over them just moments ago. Just a few more turns and he would be there. He was 3 blocks away from her house when he turned a corner and ran over a cat. And to top it off, there was a cop sitting at the same corner! After he rolled on about 100 feet further, the cop turned on his lights and signaled for Condren to stop.
So, he did.
The cop walked up to the car and said, "Son, do you realize you just ran over a cat?" Condren did what I'm sure we all do as a cop walks up the side of the car. He watched him approach in the side-view mirror. As he got closer and closer, Condren tried to determine several things:
1) Was he wearing his seatbelt?
2) Is this one of those hard ass cops who wouldn't give his own mother a break (As if you can tell that sort of thing from examining if the cop's belt buckle is shiny or the way his shirt is tucked in)?
3) Did he have his driver's license with him?
4) What the hell did he do wrong?
Condren said, "Well, Sir, I thought I heard something".... Playing stupid. He knew damn well that he ran it over. Then the cop said, "Well, son, don't you think you should go back and see if it is alright?" Not wanting to get him upset, and having VERY little concern for the cat, Condren said, "Err, yes?" The cop, signaling Condren with his flashlight, said, "Come-on, let's go see." So, he got out of the car and walked back with the cop making sure that he was walking the best that he could. You see, Condren felt just a little wobbly and he was really feeling the adrenaline rush. This was the first time Condren was ever pulled over for a moving violation. They got back to the cat and Condren saw that it was flat like a pancake.
Dead... No doubt about it!
It wasn't an orange tabby or anything cute like that. Instead, this cat had no color in particular that could have been considered the dominant color. It was kind of orange-gray-brown-black-white and mixed all together. Imagine, if you will, if you were to shave a skunk, a squirrel, a ferret, a Jersey cow, Tom Hanks head, and a goat, then mix all of the fur together in a bucket and then glue it to a cat and you will have the general picture. The cat was ugly before it was hit. Or, at least Condren believed it had to have been. The left ear was half torn off, probably from a fight. He could tell the ear was an old injury, as the tires of his car did not squish the cat's head. The patchy spots on his face and neck suggested that the animal had been battling fleas for most of its life. To top it off, the damned thing smelled like a sewer.
The cop said, "Well son," (he seemed to like calling Condren "son"), "what do you suppose you should do about this?" Condren had no clue what he was getting at so, with a little smile, he said, "Move it to the grass?" The cop about blew up as he screamed at Condren. His arms were flailing about and his face turned beet red. The man actually hopped up and down as he screamed, "
This could be some little girl's pet! Do you have any kids? What do you suppose your son/daughter would do if they walked to school in the morning and found their little 'fluffy' on the grass... squished? Are you some kind of fucking moron or something? Jesus H Christ. I thought I'd seen dumb in my day, but you take the proverbial cake, son!"
Condren felt really low. This wasn't an alien feeling to Condren at all. In fact, Condren's mother seemed to make a sport out of making Condren feel like he had just raped the kid who came in last at the Special Olympics. Condren said, "What should I do officer"... He was so tempted to say "ociffer", but didn't (probably the smartest decision he made all night). The ociffer said, "I think you should go knock on doors until you find the owner of this precious little ball of love." Condren looked down at his cell phone which was holstered to his hip, saw that the time was 2am and, because he was afraid of missing out on his 'date' with Traci, he decided to do what the cop said.
He started to walk up to the door of the house nearest where the cat lay sprawled out on the street and the officer cleared his throat, "hhhmmm huumm." Condren turned back around to see what the officer was doing. The cop pointed at the cat. He knew; he didn't know how he knew; but, he knew the cop wanted him to pick it up and carry it to the door as he searched for the owner. So, Condren went back, picked up the cat by the tail and as soon as he did so this thick pus that looked like a mixture of blood and fuck-knows-what starts running out of this cat's mouth and pooling up on the concrete. It spooked Condren and he almost dropped the fucking thing and spun around, flailing the cat behind him. Fortunately, he was able to control himself and regain his composure.
He was already woozy from the excitement of being invited to a girl's house at 1:30 in the morning and from being pulled over for the first time in his life. He didn't need this cat's still-steaming inner organs adding to his urge to puke. Never the less, He carried it up to the house. He rapped on the door. After about an eternity that was about 30 seconds long, nobody answered the door, so he turned to walk to the next house. The cop clears his throat again, points at the door and says, "Give it a good bang... people are sleeping, you gotta wake 'em up ...give 'em some time to get to the door."
Condren was incredulous at this point but he went back up and banged again.... Praying that this was the house where the cat lived and hoping that it wasn't.
He banged harder. After about a minute, an old guy in boxer shorts - complete with a shirtless beer belly hanging over them - came to the door. The man was about 4 foot ten inches tall when standing straight up. He was probably about that tall when laying flat on his back, too. Condren thought he could smell the man through the closed screen-door and it wasn't Old Spice. The man's boxers were worn so thin that Condren almost couldn't tell that at one time they had sported the likeness of SpongeBob Square Pants. There were cigarette burns and food stains on them, too. Condren held up the cat and said, "Excuse me for interrupting your sleep but, I ran over this cat and I was wondering if it belonged to you." The disgusting creature on the other side of the door reached down his shorts and adjusted his package. Then, he rubbed his eyes while looking through the screen door like he was trying to see the color of the cats eyes, one of which was kind of bulging out of its socket at this point. He was really looking close at the cat so luckily he didn't notice the pile of goo that was congealing on his porch. He grumbled something unintelligible and then he said, "
NO! Get off my porch!" Then he slammed the door and the light went out.
Well, off to the next house.... The cop was right behind Condren but never came up off of the sidewalk leading to the house. Condren kind of felt like a little kid trick-or-treating with Dad, watching nervously from the sidewalk and collecting beers at the houses of the neighbors that he knew. That was kind of a tradition on Condren's street. The parents would get their treats in the form of beer as they walked the kids from house to house complaining about how this particular Halloween was much colder than any in the past. Invariably someone would bring up how it always seems to rain on Halloween and then someone else would complain about the end of daylight savings time. It was also tradition that Condren would dress up as a Stormtrooper every year. And, every year, the neighbors would say, "Who could this be? What a scary costume!" As if they didn't know that it was Condren behind the mask. Clearly they knew that a Stormtrooper was scary, though.
Condren banged on the next door. The TV was on. Good sign. Seconds later a kid who must have been about 15 years old answered the door. The pizza sauce on the boy's chin was fresh and it merely smeared when he tried to wipe it off with his thumb. The boy didn't have the slightest sign of facial hair and when he raised his skinny, under-developed arm, Condren noticed that there were no hairs in the pit. Perhaps his initial estimation of the boys age was a bit generous. Or, perhaps the boy was a late bloomer. The boy's chest was narrow and bony like that of a sparrow and his legs were so thin, they almost seemed to get wider at the knees.
Condren held up the cat again and asked the same question. The teen said, "Dude, that is gross... it ain't mine." Knowing that kids keep track of stupid things like where neighborhood cats live, Condren asked if the boy knew where the cat lived. The boy said he wasn't sure, but there was a lady three-doors-down who had about 50 cats. The boy motioned in the direction away from the house Condren had just visited.
Isn't there always a lady like that in EVERY neighborhood?
Condren returned to the cop and said, "That seems like our best bet... can we skip 2 houses and check that one?" The cop indicated that this would be fine by giving a tilt of his head in the direction of the Cat-Lady-House and whisking Condren's feet along with the light of his flashlight. Other than that brief moment where his flashlight was shining at Condren's feet, the whole time he was talking to him, the cop was shining that blinding flashlight right in Condren's eyes.
Asshole!
They walked over to the house. Condren knocked on the door. About a minute later, a light came on upstairs. Then a few seconds later, a light downstairs came on. Condren knocked again, a little lighter this time. Another minute went by (a minute = an HOUR when you are doing something this stupid). Then, the porch light came on and the door swung open. Immediately upon the door opening, three cats ran out and stopped at Condren's feet sniffing at the blood that had dripped on Condren's shoes. He held up the cat and looked, at the lady.
She was about 45 years old, wrapped in a dirty-white bathrobe that was tied closed with a belt from some other source, curlers in her hair, cigarette - not lit - dangling from her lips. Got the picture? Condren could barely squeeze out the words, "Ma'am, I ran over this cat at the corner and the kid who lives three doors down thought it might be one of yours...." The words trailed off like when Condren had to tell his father that I had gotten a 'B' advanced placement trig in high school.
Condren had thought the first guy looked at the cat close. This lady was definitely trying to tell what color the cat's eyes were.... That was how close she looked at the cat. She squinted as she pressed her nose against the screen. After a second or two, she said, "Well, yes, I think it is." Condren could see a tear welling up in her eyes. He really felt like a heel at this point. His mother had never made Condren feel THIS low. Not even close.
Here he was, holding up her cat like it was just any old road-kill, trying to find the words to break the silence. Condren finally said, "Ma'am, I feel really bad. Is there anything that I can do?"
She wiped the tear and said, "Gee, I don't know."
Feeling really really uncomfortable, Condren started to back away on the porch.
THE COP WAS RIGHT BEHIND HIM! He put the flashlight in Condren's back as if to say, "You're not going anywhere son."
Condren looked back at the lady.
She said, "You know, cat food and litter is expensive. If you could give me... say... $20? We could forget the whole thing."
Wanting nothing more than to get out of there and sure that Traci was worried sick because Condren had not made it to her house yet, he agreed. Condren dug $20 out of his wallet and handed it to the lady, who stuffed it into her robe pocket and promptly attempted to shut the door. The cop was so swift to move past Condren that he was a blur. The officer's foot wedged between the door and the jam and the door sprang back open when it bounced off the cop's shoe. The woman's eyes grew wide and the cigarette dropped to the floor where it was quickly batted away by a small gray cat with the longest whiskers Condren had ever seen. The officer grabbed the lady by one arm and spun her around with great force. It appeared that he was actually trying to hurt the poor woman. She let out a yelp and stumbled forward hitting her head on the wall. By the time she regained her balance, the officer had already applied the bracelets with the precision of a magician making a dove appear out of thin air. The officer said, "Ma'am, you're under arrest."
"Why am I under arrest?" she protested.
"For selling pussy."
The end
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