... a picture is worth a thousand words, it is said, and surely the tale explaining this little scene must be a great story, but, for the life of me, i cannot recall what it was i did that earned me one of ma's death grips ... whatever it was, i must've been guilty, since if innocent i would've been struggling instead of surrendering with only a rather pathetic limp-shoulder form of passive resistance ... mike's off in the background, carefully distancing himself from my walk of shame, so it's likely he was somehow involved in setting me up for capture and disgrace ... as for the toilet paper in ma's hand, that's a real mystery ... i'm grown up enough here, nine or ten years old, that whatever my misdeed i'm sure there's no chance it would've involved any sort of personal hygiene mistake on my part ... of course, ma was one of those women who like magic seemed always to be able to conjure from thin air a fresh roll of bathroom tissue ... boy scouts we were, me and mike and pa, but it was always ma to the rescue when it came to that sort of emergency ... perhaps it was one of the nosebleeds i used to get every now and then when i was a kid ... if more of my face was showing we might be able to see that ma used the paper for one of the its many alternative functions, cramming it up into my nostrils seemingly to where it pressed against the bottom of my brain, then uttering that which was of the most depressing things a kid could hear, "breath through your mouth until it stops" ... i would pull out the blood-soaked wads too soon, naturally, if only to gross out my little sister, at which point i'd have to move up to the front seat and sit next to pa while he drove, one of his stubby fingers pressed lengthwise against the bottom of my nose ... it always felt that i was going to end up looking like willey coyote after the steamroller flattened his face, but i didn't care because even with that, and a dripping blood nose, with pa's arm around me and a view out the front window all was right with my world ...
ARGUS C3-CINTAR 50MM-F/5.6?-1/100TH-EKTACHROME-ISO 80