Page 218 of Story of My Life
Something warm and wet plopped on my head. I reached up just as a shadow swooped over me. “Goddammit, Goose! Did you just shit on me?” I demanded as the damn bird landed on a Subaru two spaces down. He gave a demanding squawk and held up one foot like it was injured.
“You think you can scam me for treats after shitting on me?” I barked.
“Good eagle. Nice aim,” my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Hoffman, said. She glared at me as she tossed a handful of treats on the roof of the car.
Swearing under my breath, I used the flyer to clean the bird shit out of my hair and tried not to gag. I didn’t want to give Story Lake yet another thing to gossip about.
I marched over to the trash can and hurled the shit-soaked paper inside. Movement caught my eye, and I instinctively flinched. But it wasn’t another pass by a bald eagle. Instead, the Story Lake Warblers were advancing on me in militaristic formation. They stopped directly in front of me, faces stern, bodies blocking the entire sidewalk.
“No,” I growled.
I was cut off by a huffy note from Scooter’s pitch pipe, followed by an angry, harmonizing hum. There was nothing to do but wait it out.
“Campbell Bishop, you’re a skunk
Condemned to stew alone in your funk
You hurt our dear friend Hazel
’Cause you’re just a lowly weasel
She’s better off without your heart of stone
And you’re the one who’ll end up alone”
Spontaneous applause broke out from the other passersby on the sidewalk.
“Seriously, Livvy?” I called to my brother, who was clapping and whistling from the store steps. He responded with a middle finger.
I turned my attention back to the Warblers. “Hazel hired you guys? Real mature.”
Scooter’s eyes narrowed. “No one hired us. We’re doing this for free,” he announced haughtily.
I was about to tell Scooter exactly where he could shove his pitch pipe when my phone vibrated in my pocket. Hazel was my first thought, and I embarrassed myself by frantically patting my pockets.
Dad:Need you to swing by the farm when you have a minute.
It was definitely not disappointment I felt in my chest that it wasn’t Hazel. Nope. I was over her, and she was over me.
“What the hell’dyou do to your hair?” Dad wondered, when I walked in the house.
“I didn’t do it. Goose was having target practice downtown.”
Mom paused in her irritated banging of pots and pans in the kitchen to give a vindictive laugh.
“Christ. Not you too. The whole damn town is more upset over this breakup than we are,” I said.
“About that. Let’s go talk in the office.” Dad guided me out of Mom’s line of fire.
He closed the door behind us and gestured for me to take a seat in Mom’s chair. Then he picked up a piece of paper off his desk, cleared his throat, and started to read.
“You are measuring life by the number of bumps in the road. That’s not an accurate estimate by any means.”
“What are you doing?”
He looked up from his notes. “I’m lecturing you. Your mom knows I get flustered, so she made some notes.”
To this day, I still vividly recalled Dad’s awkward attempt at giving me the birds and bees talk when I was ten.
