Life stories series: A scotter named lucky

A scooter named lucky
By Mike Marcellino

The prose daily volume 1
Life stories Days 3, 4 and 5 June 2009


The writer had lost track of the days. He just knew he had passed through days 3, 4 and 5.

He had a record.

Monday night he took off on his classic Japanese model to the drug store. Well, they really aren’t drug stores anymore. No new one he’d ever seen had a soda fountain.

He went to the drug store for Snickers, his favorite candy bar. Hoped they were on sale. The drug store was only a short distance, but he still had to ask for directions. His post traumatic delayed directional disorder was worse at night.

The Snickers bar was 89 cents. Out the door, he unlocked his classic Japanese model built like a tank. As he waited for the light to change, a fire truck came screaming by, red and white neon bubble flashing. The hook and ladder pulled into the other new drug store across the street.

“A drug store on every corner, a chicken in every pot,” he thought. “Why is that?”

He swung his leg over the cross bar, peddled slowly across the intersection. He had a green light. On his back he carried an Indian army surplus pack and in his left hand held a plastic thrift store bag containing a new pair of kaki shorts he got for six bucks and an army green shirt, Indian too, less than two bucks from the thrift store, a non-profit the black woman clerk said was owned by Jews.

Almost midway inside the cross walk, a pickup truck whizzed by, a near miss. Then suddenly out of nowhere he heard the winding motor of a scooter looking him straight in the eyes.

Smack, he got hit head on, the writer, the classic Japanese, another white guy and scooter all went sprawling onto the pavement.

Cars sped by. As the writer got up, the scooter guy, shaken, asked, “Are you ok? Are you ok?”

Then a black guy driving by sticks his head out the window, “I’m gonna waste you.”

The writer wondered, “Which driver is he talking about?” He did have a green light. .

His left thumb tingled a bit, that was it.

The writer punched in the hack’s name and phone number and rode off.

His bike came through without a scratch, leaving its mark on the front fender of a coffee cream scooter named “Lucky.”

(To be continued.}

A scooter named lucky, Life stories, Days 3, 4 & 5, Copyright by Mike Marcellino & Mike Marcellino Communications, 2009