Check Please

My friend Danny dropped me off on a Friday night and told me he was beat and had to go get some rest. Tomorrow was a big day. I lived in a trailer park in age gone by, where units sat side by side and abutted end to end, seperated by uneven, cracked paved roads only wide enough for two small cars or one big ass pick up truck, where water collected in lakes after a good storm.

I didn't call him a pussy that night because I was glad to be rid of him. The night was boring and we'd cruised the local hangouts, but nothing was going on. There was probably a great party going on somewhere, and everyone knew about but us.

Inside I could hear dad snoring from his bedroom, so I shut his bedroom door to take the edge off. I flicked on the Atari and stretched the control to the couch and scootched the dog over with my rump and started into level one of Space Invaders.

Then an explosion rocked the trailer and the windows rattled to the point of breaking. I ran outside and saw though a smoking fiery hole in the trailer perpendicular to ours, the one whose end was no more than twenty feet from ours.

And Danny ran out it's side door.

It turns out that he was a little bored himself, and went there straight away--obviously. He and his buddy there were banging rocks on gun powder from an emptied 30-30 shell near a propane tank whose valve was open a peep. The powder smoked and they leapt to the floor when the whole place went up. Nobody was injured.

When Danny got married several years later, when it was my turn to tell a funny story, one that captured the essence of our mutual friend, this is the one I told.

Blank faces, crickets chirped.

Check please.