SKATING ON THE RINGS OF SATURN

Back when I was a library bound teenager I befriended a girl named A---- who a walking collection of bouncing angles. She was an odd one, a smart hooiser with a rabid stink eye and a smile that was hedged with teeth. I used to think of her (and her family) as People of the Teeth. Their trenchant wit had the chomp of a whip.

She both intrigued and frightened me. She wasn't pleasant or generous, no, but she was an original.

Some of her originality may have been inspired by her older brother, a Viet Nam Vet who became an iron worker. He was a freaking terror. A----- once told me a story about how he was leaving the old Rusty Springs bar one night when some guy made a pass at his girlfriend. The bro picked up the receiver of the wall phone near the door, jammed in into the guys mouth and twisted it around forcefully. The guy lost a lot of teeth.

Turned out it was the wrong guy.

Viet Nam didn't kill him, it was a fall from a building he was working on downtown in the 80's.

I worked downtown in the late 70's and, while walking to lunch one day heard a whistle that I just knew was directed at me. Not a woof call but a Hey You whistle. I looked around and upwards and eight 'floors' up was her brother walking a girder and waving at me. That was impressive, I'd only met him twice and was surprised he spotted me in a crowd from that height.

A---- had a convoluted vocabulary loaded with mysterious expressions. One was, You are so far out you're skating on the rings of Saturn.

We were BF's for a decade. Eventually we parted. She found a higher power and I, well I had my molars pulled.