Within Five Minutes, a very brief tale with a very short span of time in which the story begins and ends in a time frame of Five Minutes, as told by Gerry Buncher. First, the Epilogue: My Grandma Buncher, was a woman of a few words, lots of passive-aggressive gestures, but very short on actual verbalization of what she was thinking. Sadly, I only had 7 years of knowing my Grandma Buncher, as she passed away, way too soon in my life. But within that short period of time together, when she would give permission for me to join her in the kitchen, where she would spritz some seltzer water with either ginger or a syrupy blueberry concoction, providing us (my little sister was too young to be in the kitchen, because she might touch something sharp or heavy), with something called POP ( jargon for Soda, in Pittsburgh.)
One Sunday afternoon, when Fall was about to be replaced with Winter, and the days grew darker way too soon, providing mysterious shadows in corners of the room which usually seemed safe, my Grandma Buncher placed her hands on my shoulder (something VERY unusual). She leaned in, (I expected a kiss, but again that was usually something we exchanged when we arrived and departed her house,) my Grandma Buncher, her breathe still full of the aroma of her favorite lifesaver, Peppermint, looked me in the eye and said: I am leaving soon, and perhaps we have not had enough time to get to know one another, but please listen closely to what I am about to tell you. I stiffened up, assuming I was going to be left alone in the now darker and scarier kitchen whose shadows were almost like life forms reaching out to grab me, but paying no attention to my body language, my Grandma Buncher continued: What you see, you will remember for moments in your life, how you remember what you see, will stay with you, your entire life. The truth is what your eyes are witnessing, how the truth is told is just mere pieces of the fact. Then dramatically my Grandma Buncher turned to a very fragile plate, held it up high, high enough that I was certain she was about to throw it to the ground, instead, she handed it to me. Surprised you, she joked (my Grandma Buncher NEVER joked, and hardly laughed). If I threw that plate to the ground and it shattered, what would you remember, the beauty of the plate that once was, or the torrent of sharp pieces of glass all over the ground? And with that, she placed the plate back on the counter, handed me my plastic glass of POP, and took the other glass and said let’s give this to your sister.
Within Five minutes from exiting my gym, 24 Hour Fitness, on Santa Monica Boulevard, located in the heart of West Hollywood, I was approached by a young woman wearing a red apron, waving to me and shouting I like your tank top,(bull shit I say, as it was just a sweaty gray tank top, but her ulterior motive was to have me stop and talk about Habitat For Humanity. I had my earbuds on and pretended I could not understand a word she was saying, and to be honest, I WASN’T because, lying about two feet to her side was a woman whose shorts were down to her ankles, her panties stained, lying face down on what might have been a blanket, snoring, very loud. (I at least knew she was alive.) Much to the chagrin of this young woman wanting a credit card or something from me, I had taken about twelve steps, only to find a young man in a bow tie, waving me to come forward, and through the din of my earbuds, I heard him say, Save the Children. I said something stupid like I had already given WHEN the next encounters I had were a man and a woman, one holding a shopping cart with plastic bags, and the other yelling that he wanted the bottle of wine. She threw what was remaining in the bottle at him and I scurried away as fast as I could. Thinking I was away from this chaos (not madness, because, if it was madness, then I too had to be as insane as what I witnessed), my final encounter was the lady who always is carrying at least four plastic bags filled with whatever she could find in the trash barrels. This time what I saw was a bent-over body, the top of the torso inside the trash barrel, and the bottom of the torso, seemingly hanging on for dear life, and her pants being pulled to showcase the crack of her ass. I moved a few feet away from this particular person, knowing that she had a mean temper if you dared ask if she needed any assistance, and I finally reached the corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica. I stopped turned around trying to re-imagine that all I saw was just my imagination.
The Talking Heads reminds us that as long as the Economy is good Trump stands a good chance to be re-elected. #Moscow Mitch swears the deficit, the one he and his GOP Oligarchs created by providing the 2% with more tax breaks, would be less if we took away ENTITLEMENT programs, like health, housing, mental health coverage, and food stamps. The Evangelical American Christian Taliban get all huffy and either say pull yourself up from your own shoestrings or that if you truly believe in Jesus nothing bad will happen. Prologue to Within Five Minutes, by Gerry Buncher…maybe my Grandma Buncher was correct, “how you remember what you see will stay with you, for your entire life! I am so tired of having to witness, the poverty, the lack of pride, the sheer essence of dehumanizing human beings. This IS the Age of TRUMP! I wish I could forget!
