There Is Always A Tourist Who Walks Beside You

Beneath an excessively groomed pediment of stone white hair his face was tanned a particularly cancerous shade of brown, and his pruned neck terminated in a repulsively starched and canary yellow nylon golf shirt buttoned all the way up to the thorax. He drove the sort of enormous automobile that guzzles gas like a hungry infant guzzles milk from a bottle, his wife seated beside him, a purse-lipped package of wrinkles and taut sinew slathered in make-up. She might have dead, or impersonating a salami for all I knew.

"Where can I park around here?" He demanded of me as I strolled home with my bag of groceries, as if I were his personal parking attendant.

"This is Beacon Hill," I told him. "It's all resident parking only around here. You can try Cambridge Street or there's a lot under the Commons."

He rolled his eyes and flashed me a bleachy smile, cynical and condescending. "Well how's anyone meant to see the place if you can't park here?"

There were many replies to that. Here was a typical tourist, one among many millions, who could not conceive that the world had not been designed for his own convenience. But then, why would he? Raised in a human battery farm of gated community, shopping mall, and office complex, why would he not believe that everywhere else was equally as uniform and structured. I am sure he felt surprised that he did not have to pay to get in, obviously considering Beacon Hill to be some sort of Plimoth Plantation living museum. I often observe such daytrippers, taking photographs of fire hydrants that they think date back to the time of Paul Revere.

"Hey, Frank, over here: this must be the Starbucks the Pilgrim Fathers went to."

Comments

[Kat]

Heh. When I lived in Marblehead, tourists would ask if 114 North (in Old Town) was the way to Beverly. I would explain that they would have to follow 114 south back to Salem and pick up 1A to get to Beverly. On more than one occasion they would argue with me.

Yes ignore me, since I live here I obviously don't know what I am talkingabout. Keep on going straight, you can wait at the town dock and wave to Beverly while they build the bridge.

Eejits

[J.Peterman]

Stunning and transcendent.I might like to use this in my next catalogue if you can work in a reference to the Harris Tweed Blazer,..

[DarkoV]

Isn't there a one-way street you could direct them to that has that one tricky-quicky turn that, if one doesn't know about, would land them in the river?

I'm assuming you'd leave the explanation of that turn out of your directions.