"Sampson"
When I took off my hat, she laughed at me.
I knew she was looking at my hair, and that it probably was funny-looking right then. I took a look at my reflection in the rear-view mirror. I'd had my hat on since early that morning. I'd jumped out of the shower, gotten dressed and thrown on the hat in lieu of any semblance of hair-maintenance. Thing is, whenever I do this, my hair has the habit of behaving something like a frozen liquid, taking the shape of its container and then holding that form until some effort is made to thaw it. In this particular instance, mi capellii had frozen in a tragic tangle of swirls flowing back from my forehead and matted to my scalp. This was accented by the visible line that marked the point where the area covered by the hat ended and the area that had enjoyed an open-air drying began, with the bottom noticeably more fluffy than the top. The cherry on top was the pinkish-red line running the breadth of my forehead and hinting at the possiblility of a lobotomy in the recent past. I cracked a smile myself. I was funny looking.
I scratched my head a little bit to loosen the tangles. "Thanks," I said sarcastically. Gina tousled my hair a bit more for me and then started scratching my head up and down and around in little circles, which she knew I love, as most guys do. When she stopped too soon I whined a little bit and, when she didn't resume scratching, I put my cap back on and gave her my best pouty-face as I drove on.
"Awww, you're just like a little whiney puppy," she said "maybe I'll call you Sampson, too."
I looked at the little bobble-head dog on her dash that I'd bought her the week before and it nodded back in acknowledgement. "Nah," I said "it fits him better, I think."
"But oo's a widdle puppy poo too, isn't oo?" she gushed in the voice she knew I hated.
"Stop it"
"Es him is! 'E's a widdle biddy puppy pooo!" she scratched behind my ears playfully.
"Please stop it."
"Awwwwwwwwwwww does da widdle biddy puppy poo not like it when Gina-weena talks wike dis?"
"Seriously! Stop it."
"Mmmmmmkay..." and after a long pause, "...puppy poo." She settled back in her seat, looking infinitely pleased with herself, smiling ahead at the road. God, she was beautiful just then.
I smiled too, in spite of myself. I hate to admit it but I actually sort of liked it when she talked in that horrible little baby voice. I knew she only did it to get under my skin, which I can appreciate. It's good to see a girl give as good as she gets every once in a while... Yeah, but I also just liked her babying me. I'll be a man and admit it. Dammit, I was smitten.
I looked at her sitting there with her smug little smile and I felt blood rush to my face. It made me feel warm to look at her and I loved it. We'd only been dating for a little while, and it was scary how much I was into her. She made me think these awful, gushy thoughts that I never thought would find themselves in my mind. After all, I thought I was sane. But now I knew something that connected me to the rest the men in history: This is what men fight for. This is why men write and sing. This was why men spend, travel and just plain lose their minds... to make something like this all their own. I thought things like this, and I knew they were inexcuseably lame. I knew they were worse than the worst bad poetry I just and didn't care. I was in the kind of love that made everyone around me want to puke, and I was all the better for it. And to think that she felt the same way about me just made no sense. We were in our own little world and nobody could touch us.
It was ridiculous. It was gross. I was falling hard.
I don't know what we hit in the road, if we hit anything, but just then my front left tire blew. It just blew. We were on the interstate going seventy-five miles and hour and this thing doesn't just go flat, it pops. "POW!" and I can't steer for anthing. I felt the left side of the car drop a few inches up front and heard the whump whump whump of the tire before it completely shredded and came off. I was in the left lane and we were between two of those concrete barriers in a construction zone. Everything started moving in slow motion. Gina was screaming beside me. When the tire came off the rim dug into the newly paved asphalt below us and jerked the car violently to the left. The front end slammed into the concrete barricade and the back end spun out behind me so I was staring straight at the barrier now in front of me. I looked to my left and saw a white minivan barreling towards us. I felt my side of the car start to lift and I just knew we were going to flip, but before we did the minivan swerved to its right and took the back off our car. The impact whipped my head into the window and busted it out. I could hear the glass breaking but I didn't feel the smack. When the minivan slammed into us it spun us 180 degrees in the road and we came to a stop perpindicular to oncoming traffic. I felt warm wetness on the side of my head and face. I couldn't see well at first. Everything sounded muffled and Gina was shaking me and saying something I couldn't hear or couldn't understand. She had tears in her eyes. Everything was still happening so slowly. I looked to my left and saw the minivan and the back of our car crumpled together ahead in the road. I figure maybe five seconds had passed since the tire blew.
Dull in my ears, I heard the sound of screeching tires again. I looked back to my right and behind Gina's tear streaked face I saw the chrome grill of a big black truck coming too fast. My eyes widened and I tried to yell but nothing came out. Gina had just started to turn her head to follow my gaze when I saw the glass behind her explode. Even over the screaming tires I could hear the pieces singing through the air around us. The headlights of the truck lit them from behind and gave her a halo made of a million tiny stars. I couldn't help but think that she looked beautiful.
...
Now I hold her hand, and she sleeps softly beside me. Monitors beep and machines hiss around us under the flourescent hospital lights. She is still beautiful and I wish that I could give her a kiss and wake her up like in the fairy tales. But I've already tried a hundred times.
It's been almost three weeks since I woke up in a bed like the one she lays in now and my mother cried over me. They told me I'd been asleep for nine days.
Gina got the worst of it. The truck hit her side. But she is alive and stable and they tell me that's a miracle in itself. They say she could wake up tomorrow or not at all.
I can't be here all the time. I've got class and other stuff, but I am here otherwise. The sun has been up for about three hours now and I've got to leave soon for my 9:00. But when I go, in case she wakes up while I'm gone, I want her to know I've been here and that I will be back real soon.
I reach in my book bag and pull out Sampson. I put him on the table at the foot of her bed. As I walk out, I give him a little tap on the nose and I hope he'll still be nodding when she wakes.
I knew she was looking at my hair, and that it probably was funny-looking right then. I took a look at my reflection in the rear-view mirror. I'd had my hat on since early that morning. I'd jumped out of the shower, gotten dressed and thrown on the hat in lieu of any semblance of hair-maintenance. Thing is, whenever I do this, my hair has the habit of behaving something like a frozen liquid, taking the shape of its container and then holding that form until some effort is made to thaw it. In this particular instance, mi capellii had frozen in a tragic tangle of swirls flowing back from my forehead and matted to my scalp. This was accented by the visible line that marked the point where the area covered by the hat ended and the area that had enjoyed an open-air drying began, with the bottom noticeably more fluffy than the top. The cherry on top was the pinkish-red line running the breadth of my forehead and hinting at the possiblility of a lobotomy in the recent past. I cracked a smile myself. I was funny looking.
I scratched my head a little bit to loosen the tangles. "Thanks," I said sarcastically. Gina tousled my hair a bit more for me and then started scratching my head up and down and around in little circles, which she knew I love, as most guys do. When she stopped too soon I whined a little bit and, when she didn't resume scratching, I put my cap back on and gave her my best pouty-face as I drove on.
"Awww, you're just like a little whiney puppy," she said "maybe I'll call you Sampson, too."
I looked at the little bobble-head dog on her dash that I'd bought her the week before and it nodded back in acknowledgement. "Nah," I said "it fits him better, I think."
"But oo's a widdle puppy poo too, isn't oo?" she gushed in the voice she knew I hated.
"Stop it"
"Es him is! 'E's a widdle biddy puppy pooo!" she scratched behind my ears playfully.
"Please stop it."
"Awwwwwwwwwwww does da widdle biddy puppy poo not like it when Gina-weena talks wike dis?"
"Seriously! Stop it."
"Mmmmmmkay..." and after a long pause, "...puppy poo." She settled back in her seat, looking infinitely pleased with herself, smiling ahead at the road. God, she was beautiful just then.
I smiled too, in spite of myself. I hate to admit it but I actually sort of liked it when she talked in that horrible little baby voice. I knew she only did it to get under my skin, which I can appreciate. It's good to see a girl give as good as she gets every once in a while... Yeah, but I also just liked her babying me. I'll be a man and admit it. Dammit, I was smitten.
I looked at her sitting there with her smug little smile and I felt blood rush to my face. It made me feel warm to look at her and I loved it. We'd only been dating for a little while, and it was scary how much I was into her. She made me think these awful, gushy thoughts that I never thought would find themselves in my mind. After all, I thought I was sane. But now I knew something that connected me to the rest the men in history: This is what men fight for. This is why men write and sing. This was why men spend, travel and just plain lose their minds... to make something like this all their own. I thought things like this, and I knew they were inexcuseably lame. I knew they were worse than the worst bad poetry I just and didn't care. I was in the kind of love that made everyone around me want to puke, and I was all the better for it. And to think that she felt the same way about me just made no sense. We were in our own little world and nobody could touch us.
It was ridiculous. It was gross. I was falling hard.
I don't know what we hit in the road, if we hit anything, but just then my front left tire blew. It just blew. We were on the interstate going seventy-five miles and hour and this thing doesn't just go flat, it pops. "POW!" and I can't steer for anthing. I felt the left side of the car drop a few inches up front and heard the whump whump whump of the tire before it completely shredded and came off. I was in the left lane and we were between two of those concrete barriers in a construction zone. Everything started moving in slow motion. Gina was screaming beside me. When the tire came off the rim dug into the newly paved asphalt below us and jerked the car violently to the left. The front end slammed into the concrete barricade and the back end spun out behind me so I was staring straight at the barrier now in front of me. I looked to my left and saw a white minivan barreling towards us. I felt my side of the car start to lift and I just knew we were going to flip, but before we did the minivan swerved to its right and took the back off our car. The impact whipped my head into the window and busted it out. I could hear the glass breaking but I didn't feel the smack. When the minivan slammed into us it spun us 180 degrees in the road and we came to a stop perpindicular to oncoming traffic. I felt warm wetness on the side of my head and face. I couldn't see well at first. Everything sounded muffled and Gina was shaking me and saying something I couldn't hear or couldn't understand. She had tears in her eyes. Everything was still happening so slowly. I looked to my left and saw the minivan and the back of our car crumpled together ahead in the road. I figure maybe five seconds had passed since the tire blew.
Dull in my ears, I heard the sound of screeching tires again. I looked back to my right and behind Gina's tear streaked face I saw the chrome grill of a big black truck coming too fast. My eyes widened and I tried to yell but nothing came out. Gina had just started to turn her head to follow my gaze when I saw the glass behind her explode. Even over the screaming tires I could hear the pieces singing through the air around us. The headlights of the truck lit them from behind and gave her a halo made of a million tiny stars. I couldn't help but think that she looked beautiful.
...
Now I hold her hand, and she sleeps softly beside me. Monitors beep and machines hiss around us under the flourescent hospital lights. She is still beautiful and I wish that I could give her a kiss and wake her up like in the fairy tales. But I've already tried a hundred times.
It's been almost three weeks since I woke up in a bed like the one she lays in now and my mother cried over me. They told me I'd been asleep for nine days.
Gina got the worst of it. The truck hit her side. But she is alive and stable and they tell me that's a miracle in itself. They say she could wake up tomorrow or not at all.
I can't be here all the time. I've got class and other stuff, but I am here otherwise. The sun has been up for about three hours now and I've got to leave soon for my 9:00. But when I go, in case she wakes up while I'm gone, I want her to know I've been here and that I will be back real soon.
I reach in my book bag and pull out Sampson. I put him on the table at the foot of her bed. As I walk out, I give him a little tap on the nose and I hope he'll still be nodding when she wakes.
posted by Bosephus Jamiroquai at 2:13 AM
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