"Your mother's on the phone."

  "Hi." 

  "This is your mother." 

  "So I've been told.  Thanks for having me.  Everybody okay?" 

  "Yeah, I'm letting you know something." 

  "Okay." 

  "I did some soul searching and feel renewed in my cause." 

  "Okay." 

  "I'm going to see the Pope!" 

A hand smooshed a

  face in a different direction.  Up close an ear heard, "I just think your ethics are blurring with my law." 

  "Away, AWAY!" A passing Magistrate's Aide hollered.  But the pile of people scrambling for the copy of the Constitution knocked out of someone's hand was grid-locked and writhing in a very most reserved way.  

  A skinny man walked up with a briefcase and set it down. 

  A tank-topped person also walked up, put hand on the gun in his waistband. 

  A little woman blew a whistle and everyone froze as authorities sorted out the pile and the chain of events. 

"Looks like the freaks found something to sign."

  Some Congressguys grouped up to fake falling into a table and knocking the proposal onto the floor.  Seeing this unfold in a crowded room, women stepped between the aggressive young men and the junior Congress person with a look of shock but ire on his face.  A senior Congress person came over and introduced himself. 

  

  "They are bullies.  I know their Greek fathers." 

  "Are you being philosophical?" 

  A chuckle.  "Frat boys." 

  "I get it Dad! You're independent-minded and stubborn and you don't want people to steal your ideas before you sell them your ideas.  I get it.  But for Christ's sake," woozy, had to sit down, "At least communicate where the fuhfront you're going.  We're all political targets too!" 

This was a crisis.

  It was manifesting in worldwide elections, economics, and between equally statured grown ups.  It was metaphored for many of us as cracking in ice. 

  The buzzword was "trust". 

"We'll have to make our own."

  A skateboarder wheel-ambled up, popped the board up with a foot, and laid it wheels-to-sky on top of some surfboards. 

  "What?" 

  "Magazine pages.  Think local." 

  "Cue cards.  Try not to be obscene." 

  "I've got an idea," a girl traveling in an RV with her parents said. 

  "(i)Whoa, whoa(i) Easy on the idea part of free-style time m'am."  A man with an arm on a shelf taped to his torso winked; "I'm the recorder for this session." 

  "Look, lemme get the storyboards to explain." 

  "What kind of (i)session(i)?" Some totally decked out hippie chicks literally peeled themselves from the inside of an old van's floor and seats and peered under and over and through sunglasses to involve themselves.  "Likeah Leary kind or a music kind or a thurpy kind." 

  "You cougars jam?" 

  "Oh we jam alright." One elbowed the teller.  "'Specially since we hooked up with the Pioneer Woman." 

  "Wait, what?" 

  "You all hooked up in there?" A young, black, professional historian started to back away from the van. 

"We're just telling stories,"

  a large crack in the hotel wall cracked even more. 

  "Someone should have that inspected." 

  "And getting reading recommendations." 

  "Off to bed children.  I'll fill you in in the morning." 

  "Somebody better fill that one before morning," a man looked at the shape of a small mortar in the cement floor behind the bar. 

"You can't write about that anymore,"

  people were told once they'd paid for their travel and boarded the planes.  Some people tried to get off of the planes sensing the absolute danger. 

  "Heard he slept with a Kpopper." 

  "He did not," his mother held up a little red flag.  A stewardess tried to unbuckle the flight attendant seat belt and found it magnetized or glued (i)clicked(i).  One still standing came out of the cockpit and locked the bathroom door lock quickly transferred to protect the pilots.  She put the key down in her bra. 

  A man visibly shaking stood and faced the people behind him.  "Who here has been writing for magazines?" Another man stood and clipped a badge that read, LAWYER, to his suitcoat outer pocket. 

  A woman on a gurney cried out in pain. 

  Another woman with a face so swollen, black and blue, and blood coming out of crevices, that people winced and oh'd and broke into whimpering said, "I just need you all to see me and then," people started to get up and move towards her mostly because she was near an open door and the plane had started down the runway, "Then I am taking two aspirin and resting."  She sat down and a friend-for-life put a grocery paper bag over her head. 

The footsteps coming down the basement palisade were

  soft. 

  Of the dozing people only two seemed to hear them.  The moustached man put a giant father hen hand out flat as if it were on a drum.  The hand signed out the game plan. 

  "Stuck in there?" Two sets of eyes behind a desk top as a spit shield asked of the man behind the even more giant bars. 

  "Is Ted in there?" One asked after answering a flip phone. 

  The man's hands raised to his face and subtley pulled at the moustache.  It didn't come off.  His voice boomed and was self-reflective at the same time.  "I can't say I need your help." 

  "Then don't," a speed dial (i)no(i). 

  "Yeah, we haven't seen anything." 

  "Have a good night." Together the pair backed down the hallway.

"My question is:

  "Why are you guys so mean?" 

  The question had come from a section of "audience" still dressed in work clothes, dress pants and skirts and dresses.  The meet-your-neighbor style Intro to the Outdoors day event had quickly moved from "There's the river," to a Q&A when two rafters had a bit of a mudfight.  "Are they trying to kill each other?" A child took a grown up's hand and asked.  The group "organically" veered away. 

"Come in, come in."

  "What are you doing back here?" 

  "Airport's not letting anything out." 

  "That's too many directors in the same room!" 

  "Not if we don't fight." 

  "Have you seen this one?" 

  "It's pretty funny." 

  "Night."