[untitled]

this is what happens when you take an ambien and force yourself to stay awake.

Sean bent down to tie his shoe.  His face inched closer to the ground until the only image on screen was the tops of his Nike mids, not new anymore and beginning to show signs of age.  They will be gloriously beat to s**t in a few months, destroyed only in the masterful way that adolescent boys know how.  The red suede upper would soon pale in color and begin to collect various urban detritus.  The white leather would be done for sooner than that; already an off-white, covered in a film of pollen, dirt, dust, little boy collections.  The left sole had a piece of Winterfresh stuck in the grooves, and the right shoe's laces were caked in mud.  A blade of grass peaked out from the toe of the left, glued in place by the gum.  Exemplary, this boy's determination to get his shoes to look the way they should.  His dedication seemed unmatched - other boys could be caught spit-cleaning scuffs off of their's, and afterwards bringing them to eye-level for optimum observation.

But it was in Sean's shoe-tying and his dedication to it that he missed a series of events he may have done better to pay attention to.

As he stopped to inspect the wayward lace, a girl sped by him on a skateboard.  Sean took no notice of her curly, honey colored hair tied up in a purple scrunchie. He didn't see her hair blowing wildly behind her in the wind, unburdened and flowing free from a helmet.  Her slight build, almost pre-pubescent, pumped furiously as she swung her leg down and out, propelling herself down the street at an absolutely irresponsible speed.  Sean might have heard the music, deep and bass-driven, coming from the obscenely large headphones strapped to her ears, but whatever cacaphonous rhythm drifted towards him was out before it even went in, and he took no notice of it.

As Sean bent towards his shoe, lowering his head and bending his left leg under him, he was oblivious to a screech of tires, a honk of horns, a car speeding through the intersection and blowing the red traffic light.  Sean, focused too much on his own red, barely registered squealing tires.   He wrapped his laces around and around, looped and swooped and pulled, his task at hand too involving to pay attention to the whining, crunching, shattering, glass-breaking that floated down the street to him.

And, in arising just for a second before reconsidering and swooping back down to pick away the blade of grass, he was completely and utterly oblivious to the comicly large headphones bouncing down the street to his left, a mop of honey-blond bouncing between them.

His shoe tied, Sean stood up and finished his walk home.