Within moments, I heard my mom cackle and say, "Your friend was already here, but he wasn't as funny as you." The conversation continued, but not much of it was coherent from my place in the bedroom. At times, I heard my mom's loud, high voice, and, at other times, I heard a man's voice that I only know how to describe as "black (please don't think I'm racist)." After I heard my mom shriek in laughter a couple more times, I decided to take a break and find out what was so funny.
At the door was a man in a jacket and jeans. The jeans hung low and had a skull and crossbones on each back pocket. Bordering the front pockets were silk screened brass knuckles with rhinestones in each of the finger holes. On his neck, in blue ink, was the head of a dog. Not a bulldog. And, as his voice suggested, he was black. I actually found out he's a mix. The way he explained it was, "My mom's black, and my dad's black as hell!"
This guy was very friendly, and he could have sold me my own shoes. As it happened, he was trying to sell cleaning products to my mom. He took out a rag and scribbled all over it with a pen. "How you gonna get this out?" he inquired. "You gonna have Mike Tyson bite it out? Have OJ stab it out? Have Osama hide it out?" While Mom stood in a stupor, trying to figure out how to turn this guy down and I tried to remember how to breathe, he used his magic solution to clean the rag. It actually was pretty impressive.
This guy was spraying everything: the pipe that the hose hooks up to, the cement where there were stains from rust and fertilizer, he leaned into the house to spray the tiles by the front door, and he even bent down to scrub my mom's shoe. He was dedicated.
In the end, my mom bought one of his bottles of magic, saying that she wants to support people who are out making an honest living. It's okay, mom. Magic is magic.
