Let Your Fingers do the Walking

While walking Sasha around the block today I noticed a strange black man on the street. I don't mean strange in that the man was behaving oddly, or had worms growing out of his ears. I mean strange because there are so few black faces in our neighborhood that I know each and every one. I didn't know this guy. What's more, I noticed he had something yellow clutched under his arm and he was moving quickly away from me. Before I could act on my primitive notions I realized he was delivering The Yellow Pages. Do you remember those? I looked around, and on each porch was a plastic yellow bag containing that obsolete publication. I don't think I've looked inside the Yellow Pages for at least ten years. For a while, each year, I would pick the fresh Yellow Pages up off the porch and bring it inside. There it would sit for a whole year, untouched, and unloved. Sure, it did have a few uses. It held the office door open on breezy days, and served as a device for flattening things that needed flattening, but other than that I have no use for it. It just takes up valuable space here in our very cluttered home. So when I got home with Sasha, sure enough, there were two yellow bags laying on the porch. As I gathered them up and put them in the place I have reserved for them, all I could do was think of the poor trees that gave up their lives for this ignominious end.

Reserved for the Yellow Pages