I was sitting in the old Rotunda at O’Hare, having arrived from parts unknown at the wee hours of the morning I was waiting for a Tristate Coach home. I had some four or five hours to wait until the first bus came, and the upstairs balcony at the Rotunda was clean, quiet, and offered a carpeted place I could rest my feet on my toolkit and take a nap.

Around four AYEM I woke to an insistent slap to the face. I opened my eyes to a revolver- probably a thirty eight but it looked huge to me. He asked for my wallet- I’m not that stupid, wasn’t even then- I had a moneyclip with mugger money in it, and I pulled it out of my pocket . The money clip was chrome and had a lead Mayan calendar riveted to the front, it probably weighed five ounces. Anyway, with a twenty and some ones folded up into it, I let the guy see it and flipped it, halfway around the rotunda balcony. He went after it, and I slipped over the railing and dropped to the floor below- he was betwen me and the stairway.

I hit the floor and fucked up my knee and ankle, and hobbled for most of January that year. My knee never really recovered but at least neither did the ankle. That wasnt’ the first time I’d wounded them nor was it the last. I went back in a half hour with a security guard who helped me secure my duffel and my toolkit. Then she offered to share a line of blow with me. I declined.

When my bus came I was pleased to get on it and go home. I haven’t told that story to anyone in ten years, I bet. Funny what causes the synapses to misfire and dredge up that shit, today it was the Mayan calendar. Y’all do know it ends at 2012 because thats when they ran out of numbers, right?