{"id":957,"date":"2017-04-08T13:53:59","date_gmt":"2017-04-08T17:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/?p=957"},"modified":"2017-04-08T13:53:59","modified_gmt":"2017-04-08T17:53:59","slug":"95-america-street-chapter-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/?p=957","title":{"rendered":"95 America Street, Chapter 8"},"content":{"rendered":"

May 7th<\/sup>, 2012<\/em><\/p>\n

Barry walked into the kitchen at The Castle.\u00a0 It was a little after six in the morning.\u00a0 Terrence had just woken up and was eating oatmeal (or porridge as he would call it).\u00a0 He was so startled by Barry\u2019s appearance that some porridge oatmeal went down the wrong tube and he began to cough violently.\u00a0\u00a0 Terrence\u2019s face had become red so fast that one might think he was a less important mutant in the X-Men universe, a mutant that only had the power to turn red very quickly and therefore was never involved in many important mutant adventures.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou alright, hombre?\u201d Barry asked.<\/p>\n

Terrence nodded while coughing which caused his nodding to stray from the usual, rhythmic pattern that nodding tends to follow.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow you see why I avoid that unsavory paste you\u2019re eating.\u00a0 Chardonnay never does this to me.\u00a0 Oatmeal can kill you!\u00a0 It\u2019s riskier to your health than smoking or skinny dipping in the ocean during a lightning storm\u2026don\u2019t ask me how I know.\u00a0 Whoa.\u201d<\/p>\n

The coughing lingered to the point that the lack of bodily control was starting to frustrate Terrence.\u00a0 Barry held out a black VHS cassette to Terrence.\u00a0 \u201cMaybe this will ease your porridge attack.\u201d<\/p>\n

With great concentration, Terrence managed to speak.\u00a0 Knowing a cough was right around the corner, he spoke rapidly, \u201cThank you Barry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith pleasure, Mr. Porridge Toes.\u00a0 Well, my figure needs to marinate in a sleep sauce for at least six hours so I will enjoy your presence in the PM.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barry may have been up for over 20 hours straight but he still had it in him to scat while heading up the stairs. \u00a0Terrence finally stopped coughing and studied the cassette so intently that he accidentally let one corner of the tape dip slightly into his porridge.\u00a0 When he took notice of this, he scowled and quickly cleaned it off.\u00a0 Terrence was furious with his porridge.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I entered the dining room which is strange to still refer to it as a dining room.\u00a0 There is a dining room table in the room but it\u2019s often used as a conference table.\u00a0 On the other side of the room is a large computer called \u201cThe Geek\u201d.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure any room in our time can boast of such a compelling combination.<\/p>\n

Terrence had already been watching the tape.\u00a0 He noticed me and then brought his eyes back to the screen as he spoke.\u00a0 His voice was still a tad raspy from the porridge attack. \u201cI\u2019ve been studying the tape Barry recovered.\u00a0 You were right \u2013 someone positioned the security cameras in a way that you couldn\u2019t see anything.\u00a0 But look, after Ripps adjusted the cameras, have a look\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Had this been a sketch comedy video on Funny or Die<\/em>, it would have made perfect sense.\u00a0 It would have even fared better than Will Ferrell\u2019s finest work.\u00a0 Terrence edited the footage so it I could enjoy what was a destructive highlight reel.\u00a0 Each clip started innocently.\u00a0 There would be an old woman rolling by in a wheelchair or an old man inching along with a cane and then something happened that at first, I did not see coming.\u00a0 They would look around and if no one was around, their bodies suddenly went 50 years back in time.<\/p>\n

These were young people in very convincing elderly disguises that, once the coast was clear, began vandalizing the property in a variety of ways.\u00a0 The hunched over old man with a cane crept up to a vending machine, sprung up and smashed the front glass with bottom of his cane with amazing force and then sunk back to his ancient posture and crept away.\u00a0 The old lady (her disguise actually made her only look to be about 60) moved diagonally across the gym floor in a wheel chair.\u00a0 But she didn\u2019t push her wheel chair along with her hands in the usual fashion.\u00a0 She shimmied along with her feet.<\/p>\n

The only other person I saw use a wheelchair this way was a man in his 30\u2019s that would shuffle along with his feet through my neighborhood in West Roxbury.\u00a0 This style would often make you wonder if the person really needed a wheelchair.\u00a0 A divorced and unmistakably hot woman in her 40\u2019s that I knew, Lucy, saw him shuffling along in his chair one day.\u00a0 He stopped and asked Lucy to push him up a hill.\u00a0 She did it but then scolded him for using a wheel chair when he didn\u2019t need one (or so she thought).\u00a0 I remember her telling me this story and wondering if her talk had any effect on the man.\u00a0 But then a week a later I saw him doing the wheel chair shuffle again so I guess her tough love and hotness did not motivate him to walk.<\/p>\n

The lady in the video stopped her wheelchair about mid-court, grabbed a bag that was hanging off the back of her chair, pulled out what looked to be rocks, rotten fruit and other unsavory projectiles (I\u2019m nearly certain she had a few bags of mammalian waste) and began throwing them in all directions, managing to break a couple windows in the process.\u00a0 Once satisfied, she sat back down in her chair and rolled on.<\/p>\n

Part of me desperately wanted to be entertained by all of this.\u00a0 The disguises, the commitment to their roles, it was all brilliantly theatric and executed in a manner that made most professional actors look uninspired.<\/p>\n

Terrence fast forwarded and accidentally let out a rare giggle, \u201cThis chap wasn\u2019t as skilled.\u201d<\/p>\n

A young man with long dark brown hair was wearing a gray wig that covered less than half of his hair.\u00a0 The rest of his outfit appeared to be his normal wardrobe.\u00a0 Thankfully, his vandalizing was as bad as his costume construction.\u00a0 He picked up a nearby large, hollow plastic bat and began striking a concrete wall with little effect.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Terrence\u2019s tone turned serious again, \u201cEven the handyman was in on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t believe it.\u00a0 This turkey was in the kitchen semi-disassembling the cabinets and a few appliances.\u00a0 He even kicked a few holes in a plaster wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you notice anything interesting about his tools?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d Terrence answered. \u201cThey look brand new and he\u2019s got loads of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRight\u2026and they\u2019re all<\/em> Jopman tools which is one of the highest quality toolmakers in the US.\u00a0 They also make a lot of various industrial equipment.\u00a0 Do me a favor and see if The Geek can find any interesting data on Jopman.\u00a0 I think we\u2019re going to need more than your average Google search on this.\u00a0 Perhaps The Geek can track his or her way into some more sensitive data.\u00a0 As much as I would love to send Barry out to sleep with all the female VP\u2019s of Jopman, I just don\u2019t think we have the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Terrence smiled a little bit.\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t help but be impressed by Barry\u2019s work but he now had the chance to let The Geek prove itself. \u00a0\u201cWill do!\u00a0 Oh\u2026there\u2019s something else.\u00a0 This may be difficult to watch but I have discovered the fate of Linda\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The tape showed Ripps placing Linda against the wall in a hallway outside of a bathroom and then entering the bathroom.\u00a0 A moment after, Carl, the slug of a handyman oozed out into the hallway from a door on the opposite side of the hallway, picked up Linda, studied her and walked back into the room he came from.\u00a0 Shortly after, Carl came out of the room again with several objects curled up in his left arm and walked down the hallway and out of the camera\u2019s view.\u00a0 I missed it at first so Terrence rewound the tape, paused it and zoomed.\u00a0 I could now see it.\u00a0 He was clearly holding pieces of Linda.\u00a0 She had been cut into many pieces that were all the same dimension.\u00a0 Terrence zoomed in closer to one piece in particular.\u00a0 It had the word \u201cLinda\u201d written on it.<\/p>\n

I heard screaming from outside.\u00a0 It sounded like it was behind us.\u00a0 Terrence and I turned around and there was Ripps outside of one of the windows looking at the screen.\u00a0 He had clearly watched the whole thing.\u00a0 I should have been more careful.\u00a0 I knew that Ripps like to do his outdoor rock workout or \u201cStone Social\u201d as he called it.\u00a0 He was taking a breather between sets when he walked by the window and saw the footage.<\/p>\n

Ripps\u2019 face was a window several years into the past.\u00a0 His face looked like it must have looked when his father destroyed his favorite toys years ago.\u00a0 Ripps\u2019 fa\u00e7ade was gone, leaving a very real expression in its absence on his face.\u00a0 We may think it\u2019s silly to become so upset about the destruction of a piece of wood but this seemingly boring inanimate object had fused itself with his psyche, making it a thing that represented a part of him he desperately wished to restore but could not.\u00a0 This object created hope and kept him in balance and until he learned to quell the initial trauma that created the need for it, he would become terribly out of balance.\u00a0 In many ways, this fascinating attachment to an inanimate object resembled Tom Hank\u2019s character\u2019s bond with \u201cWilson\u201d the volleyball in Cast Away<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I made eye contact with Ripps for about one second.\u00a0 He then ran off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

May 7th, 2012 Barry walked into the kitchen at The Castle.\u00a0 It was a little after six in the morning.\u00a0 Terrence had just woken up and was eating oatmeal (or porridge as he would call it).\u00a0 He was so startled by Barry\u2019s appearance that some porridge oatmeal went down the wrong tube and he began … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “95 America Street, Chapter 8”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[278,283],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-95-america-street","category-chapter-8"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2ImM6-fr","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=957"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":960,"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/957\/revisions\/960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/takethepatience.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}