Barracuda People

Draw them, write them, be shiny when you're bigger

Housekeeping: I am so close to being able to write about that Huge Freaky Inspiration that came down a couple of weekends ago. But not yet.

***

Song-in-my-head this morning.

I feel a little unprepared this morning. I thought I wanted to write more along the lines of the past few days, but this song really just barged its way into my consciousness overnight and I suppose I can’t do anything else but write about barracudas.

Growing up in the Bahamas, I knew about barracudas. Not from very much personal experience, but they were legends of bad-tempered viciousness, more feared than sharks or morays. I saw them a lot in the shallows around mangroves, and swam with them occasionally when I went snorkeling.

The conventional wisdom was this: the barracuda won’t attack you for no reason, but they’re hardwired to lunge at shiny things that move in a certain way that set off the “prey fish” subroutine in their instincts. So this is why you don’t wear your shiny watch when you’re diving, and why anything you carry on you in the water should be matte.

I didn’t wear jewelry, but I still remember the thrill of realizing that Easy and I one time had anchored in the territory of a five foot barry, and that whenever we jumped over the side of his boat to take a swim, there he was, just patrolling us. Not too near, but not too far away either, just following. Felt deeply eerie.

So what about this song?

I dreamed Trent and I were sitting at a restaurant on one of those bench seats that runs along a wall, where they put tables in front and chairs on the other side. There was a little blond boy sitting on the other side of Trent, on this bench seat. His mom has the “I want to talk to the manager” haircut, and she is…let’s just say she strikes me now as a human barracuda. Instinctively vicious. She sees the kid drawing on the paper menu with his pens, and she reaches over and grabs his pencil box away from him. “These markers are childish,” she tells him. He’s like 10 years old! “You don’t need them any more.” She gives me the pencil box.

That’s right, kid, draw it out. You’ve got her surrounded now.

I feel so bad for the kid, but he just sort of sighs, like this shit happens all the time.

I look through the pencil box and I can tell which one is his favorite pen. It’s a black ballpoint with a shiny plastic shell full of silver glitter. It’s shiny. That’s what set his mom into attack mode. I take it out and sneak it back to him behind Trent’s back. But how to get the rest of his pens back to him?

I pass him a note with a location on it— “northwest corner 6th east 3rd south” —with plans to stash the pencil box there. But…

Now I’m watching in “god perspective” as the kid and his family leave the restaurant. He has the note clutched in his hand, but his Barracuda Mom sees it, reads it, and both parents are immediately upset. They actually go to the location, all fired up and indignant and ready to yell and scream…but the pencil box isn’t there. I didn’t get there in time.

They’re rummaging through every nook and cranny they can find, but there’s nothing.

The kid, though, is observant. He’s seeing something, finding something…I’m not sure what…but I know it’s going to change his life for the better. And it’s something nobody can take away from him. He can be shiny again when he’s big enough to not be prey any more…but for now he’ll keep that pen hidden away.

*BRRRR* time’s up!

PostScript: The Barracuda Mom did get her comeuppance. On the way back from 6th east 3rd south, the family passed a dilapidated old plant store. In the entrance was a rack of sad looking plants…but I recognized one of them as the small Audrey from Little Shop Of Horrors. Barracuda Mom took one look at this plant and HAD to buy it. Nobody stopped her. I knew that it would grow big enough at some point to eat her (and just her, not the kid) but that this was her choice on some subconscious level. Viciousness attracts viciousness. The kid is gonna break the cycle, but mom’s strapped to her wheel and we have to let her go.