Monday, January 31, 2005

Big Wheel Near The Train Tracks Day

Big Wheel Near The Train Tracks Day!

Child, have you outgrown your Big Wheel? If so, take care in how you discard it. You can do one of three things:

1. Melt it. Use your Dad's barbecue lighter. And if you're a poorly supervised latchkey kind of kid whose parents are divorcing, take a can of hairspray to the lighter to make a blow torch. Melting your Big Wheel will prohibit anyone from ever enjoying it again and you'll get to see and smell burning plastic. If you already have a sense of mortality, you can connect the sight of the melting Big Wheel to your own passage into pubescence and, ultimately, your next steps towards an inevitable death.

2. Give it to a neighboring poor child. The kid with smudges of soot all over his face who wears dress shoes at all times, even on the playground, because they are the only shoes he has. That kid's parents will never be able to afford a Big Wheel for him because their minds were ruined long ago by inhalants. You'll make one little kid feel very happy if this is the way you decide to go.

3. Toss it into the hill of garbage leading up away from the train tracks. Every day thousands of commuters pass along those tracks on their way to work and back to home and every day they gaze blankly at that hill of garbage trying to quell any metaphors that might spring up in their minds. When they spot the perfectly nice Big Wheel discarded amongst so many rusted shopping carts and hack-sawed pickle barrels, it will be too much for them to handle. Their heads will be clouded with thoughts of death, impoverished children, children being molested in industrial landscapes, tubercular mothers, and fathers who drink and hit. They will remember all the bad there is in the world and they'll give a silent prayer of thanks that they and their families have been fortunate thus far. And they'll pray that nothing comes to pass that would leave them subject to the sort of poetic fate that calls to mind a child's toy gleaming from the tangles of a trash heap. You'll make a thousand adults feel helpless to the whims of a miserable Lord if this is the way you decide to go.

Happy Big Wheel Near The Train Tracks Day!