Antsy Does Time

“You’re right,” Gu

Maybe it’s just me, but I’d rather be scared of rat holes than not care.

As Gu

“Something ain’t wrong about that friend of yours,” said the Dud.

I was a little too tired to decipher dud-ese right now, so I just shrugged.

“No, you gotta listen to me, because I see things.”

That didn’t surprise me entirely. “What kinds of things?”

“Just things. But it’s more the things I don’t see that’s got my neck hairs going porcupine on me.” Then he looked off after Gu

We rode home from the junkyard in a public bus, carrying heavy boxes of car parts that greased up the clothes of anyone who passed. We didn’t say much, mostly because I was thinking about what Skaterdud had said. Talking to the Dud was enough to challenge anyone’s sanity, but if you take the time to decode him, there’s something there. The more I thought about it, the more I got the porcupine feeling he was talking about—because I realized he was right. It had to do with Gu

But even I had heard about the five stages of grief.

They’re kind of obvious when you think about them. The first stage is denial. It’s that moment you look into the goldfish bowl that you haven’t cleaned for months and notice that Mr. Moby has officially left the building. You say to yourself, No, it’s not true! Mr. Moby isn’t floating belly-up—he’s just doing a trick.

Denial is kinda stupid, but it’s understandable. The way I see it, human brains are just slow when it comes to digesting really big, really bad hunks of news. Then, once the brain realizes there’s no hurling up this double whopper, it goes to stage two. Anger.

Anger I can understand.

How DARE the universe be so cruel, and take the life of a helpless goldfish!

Then you go kick the wall, or beat up your brother, or do whatever you do when you get mad and you got no one in particular to blame.

Once you calm down, you reach stage three. Bargaining.

Maybe if I act real good, put some ice on my brother’s eye, clean the fishbowl and fill it with Evian water, heaven will smile on me, and Mr. Moby will revive.

Ain’t go

When you realize that nothing’s going to bring your goldfish back, you’re in stage four: sadness. You eat some ice cream, put on your comfort movie. Everybody’s got a comfort movie. It’s the one you always play when you feel like the world is about to end. Mine is Buffet of the Living Dead. Not the remake, the original. It reminds me of a kinder, simpler time, when you could tell the humans from the zombies, and only the really stupid teenagers got their brains eaten.

Once the credits roll, and you’ve completed stage four, you’re ready for stage five. Acceptance. It begins with a flush, sending Mr. Moby the way of all goldfish, and ends with you asking your parents for a hamster.

So I’m sitting there on the bus holding car parts while Gu

Gu

He went straight to acceptance. This crisis, which would have thrown most people’s worlds into a tailspin, instead left Gu

Gu

I went to my computer that night to escape thinking too much, or at least to force myself to think about things that didn’t matter. See, when you’re on the computer, you get really good at what they call multitasking, and usually the tasks you have to multi are so pointless you can have endless hours without a single useful thought. It’s great.

So I’m chatting online with half a dozen people, trying to maintain all these conversations while simultaneously trying to read all these e-mails filled with OMGs and LOLs that aren’t even F, while attempting to delete the obvious spam, like all those people in Zimbabwe who have like fourteen million dollars to give me, and the e-mails offering pills “guaranteed” to enlarge your muscles and other things.

Anyway, there I am, sorting online crud, when I notice something I rarely give any attention to: the ad ba

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU?

I think I must have seen this one before but it was all subliminal and stuff, because there are many times I’m sitting at this computer asking myself that same question. Meanwhile, all the chats are demanding responses. Ira’s is on top. At first he was trying to convince me about how old movies are better than new ones. He’s gotten snooty all of a sudden that way, and anytime you’re over his house, he forces you to watch classic movies like Casablanca and Alien. After chatting for like half an hour, he’s gotten tired of movie talk, and now he’s just telling dead-puppy jokes. This is where things go with

Ira, no matter how snooty he pretends to be. I ignore it, and keep my eyes on the ad. Now the answer dances across the ba

WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? ASK DR. GIGABYTE!

At first I just chuckled. Everything’s a website now. It was the next line that really got me.

WITH DR. G, DIAGNOSIS IS FREE!

I sat there staring and blinking, and shaking my head. Gu

A scoop of ice cream, some root beer, and a dead puppy, Ira’s instant message says. He’s waiting for my LOL, but right now I’ve got bigger puppies to fry.