Extra Pedestrian

I should warn you in advance:  There is absolutely no point to this story.  But I'm telling it anyway.   One day, when I was in elementary school, my friend, Paul, and I ran into one of the older kids in the restroom. I’m guessing he was a 5th grader, and that we were in 3rd or 4th grade at the time.  I don’t remember his name – assuming he ever divulged that information in the first place – but we’re going to call him John, primarily because this story is undeserving of anything better.  And John was about to lead us temporarily astray.  To clarify, by “us,” I specifically mean Paul and myself, as John would slither away undetected by those in authority.  As far as I know, he lurks freely among the general public to this very day, and is quite likely a very, very big a-hole.  Among his later transgressions, I suspect, were black market arms dealing, the inexplicable (and wholly insufferable) rise of Florida Georgia Line, and every time you've ever burnt toast.  Of course, I

What follows is, in a word, ridiculous.  But it's also kind of telling.    The New Goat Day 'series' was piloted in April of 2015, thanks to twelve photographs of goats climbing Argan trees in Morocco.  Some genius (even I'm not sure if I'm being facetious here) organized these twelve photos into a wall calendar, making the first day of each month just that much brighter for a goob like myself.  Goats are funny animals.  Doubly so among the treetops.  I couldn't help myself, I had to share.  And I had to be bombastic in how I did so.  So things grew increasingly ridiculous right off the bat.   But within a month, I had started to develop an idea, whether or not I really wanted to acknowledge it (I did not).  I was going to give legitimacy to the absurd monthly display by tying the goat photos to whatever we were all collectively experiencing at that time, be it here in the Dallas area, or nation-wide.  Backed by pictures of tree'd goats and face-palmi

No.  Not one more guy walking down the street. This isn't about that.  That's a superfluous sequel to a horror movie about a murderous hitchhiker, or another warm body hustling down a New York City avenue.  Or perhaps an unpublished verse to that terrific James Taylor song.  This is not that sort of extra pedestrian.  I'm aiming for the other definition, the one more self-deprecating.  Wildly mediocre. Especially ordinary.  Markedly uninteresting. Spectacularly... meh. For years I've had myself convinced that writing is one of my strong suits.  And it may very well be.  Or it may also be a study in self-delusion.  Either way, I've decided to start keeping better track of the occasional stories I've told, the hours I've killed behind a keyboard -- a record of all of the time I have wasted, a little of yours, scores of mine.  There will likely be some underwhelming material, and occasional expanses of difficult-to-follow passages diverting away from