Look how pretty Marigold is!!! Doesn’t she look lovely and charming? All the warmth and goodness this world needs? Well beneath that adorable surface lies the black heart of a nuisance graffiti tagger. That’s right - nobody knows but at night, when her husband is sleeping, she creeps out of bed, dresses in a black hoodie and sneaks away to wreak havoc on her pristine neighborhood. Down the street she soars on her bike, to spray paint ‘TITZ’ on the side of the post office drop box receptacle. Do you remember when someone spray painted ‘JEEZ’ in huge, puffy letters in turquoise with a black shadowing on the side of the drugstore exterior wall? That was Marigold. She couldn’t tell you why she does it. Something inside her yearns to push back against the clean, orderly world in which she seemingly thrives and fits. She sees a traffic signal control cabinet and she MUST cover it with a nonsensical bubble word. She cannot control the urge. Yeez, Zerk, Bros, Titz, Zoom, Solo, Nasty - these are the portals through which her complicated and bizarre compulsion asserts itself. No bus stop is safe. Park benches beckon her. She can’t even begin to think about the siren’s call of a train car. It’s DOPE. TAKE HER HOME!
As Courtney was handed the rule pamphlet, she swore she saw the Da Vinci code. Symbols swirled around, English words became foreign and strange. She somehow now knows how to set up a VCR after reading them, but still does not quite understand how to win atMahjong.
Last week she ordered each of them one of those gadgets that shatters your car window in case of a full water immersion. She also ordered a wind up radio. You know, in case the power grid goes down. She changed the air filters in the house last month, and commented that Olive Garden is a heck of a deal if you get a family sized pan with a five dollar take-home add-on. She’s been cracking open a Bud heavy after yoga class lately, and finally decided to try out a MyPillow.
But here she sits, six years after her appointment with WIDK reporting on milk prices, beauty pageants, the occasional car theft, Alderman election scandals, and downtown green space clean up efforts. This stupid little town doesn’t deserve her. She’s meant for greatness, and she despises their perky greetings on the streets....
