Here he is expressing his pleasure.
Hurry up!
Faster than a speeding bullet.
While Cha was relieving himself on a bush beside the bypass, an old man teetered out of his house carrying three manga comic books in his hand. He strode past us and placed them on the corner of the underpass. Just like that.
Like so.
My first thought was what a jerk, throwing away his books like that. Geez.
Then it hit me, maybe he's leaving the manga there for all the junior high school kids who invariably take the underpass on their way to school. Maybe they're really interesting comics that he wants to pass along, free of charge. What a stellar guy!
Unfortunately, he's like standing right there smoking a cigarette and starring at me so I can't take a peek.
Cha and I return home. I fix breakfast and then the thought runs through my mind, wait, maybe they're dirty books and this old man is some kind of pervert, baiting kids. (You must take note, I'm reading Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert Ressler, a book about what it is that makes a serial killer.)When it's time for J to go to school I ninja-follow him with my camera and snap some pictures. He didn't take the bait. *Wew* There he is walking into the abyss.
After making sure the old man has gone inside, I sneak over to the books to take a look. They seem safe enough. Robot stuff. But I didn't have time to thumb through them because you never know. Japanese comics can look like the cutest darned things in the world until you get half way into them...shock! The jury is still out on the old guy though.
As an aside, J is sitting beside me right now and glanced over. He saw the pictures of him walking down the bypass and says, those manga are still there by the way. It's like he read my mind. Creepy.
24 comments:
Are you sure he didn't leave a note inside the comic books like "If you like these, you should see what I have at my house for you?" Eww...writing that just gave me the creeps. Hopefully he's just an ok Joe, doing his recycling thing!
My guess and hope is that your second thought was right.. that he's just leaving them for some appreciative teens rather than throw them out. If that were here, they'd be gone in a heartbeat.
Cha is adorable.. I suspect that he and Benny would get along famously. Too cute!
You are reading a terrific book that has such insight...I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Ressler a few times when I was "on the Job". I learned you can never be to careful, I admire you for taking that extra step to protect your young people!
Sandi
ps
thanks for stopping by place and leaving a sweet comment
I studied criminology in college and Robert Ressler came to our school for a conference to speak about serial killers. It was soooo interesting.
Let`s hope the old man was just passing on some (innocent) manga.
Your dog is hilariously cute!
Pat, really depends on how you look out, huh. I've got to hurry and stop reading that serial killer book. I'm double taking EVERYONE these days.
Hilary,I need to wake up the child right now. Cha and I are going to do some further investigation after that.
I think they would get along famously, too. And Cha doesn't wear one of those halter leashes so Benny should be okay with that. Much running would be involved.
Good morning Terrie, I am hoping he was just a nice old man and he wanted to pass along free comics to the kids. : )
And Cha is so cute! He's a good little jumper! Have a wonderful day over there. : )
Sandi, I'm ashamed to say I didn't know of Ressler until recently. Fascinating man. I wish I could meet him.
Tigermama, lucky you!! When I was in high school (we'd just moved to Omaha) John Joubert killed two of his victims, one a few blocks from my house. I never knew the details until now (after reading the book). Slept very little last night. And I guess Ressler was there helping. His profile was spot on. Criminology, what a fascinating line of study!
Gina, hey! Your comment came while I was answering others. We are up and on the computer at the same time.
The good news is I so have my eye on this dude. Any wrong moves and--. I thinking if he really was a freakoid he wouldn't have put the books so close to his house or so obviously set them out there in front of my and my dog.
Cha says, hi!
Sorry about your problem, John.
Yay, my first spam!
You get spammed with Viagra and yet you have no hard feelings.. ;)
Just last week we all went to the mall. We went to the food court, all of us getting different things from different places (Which, incidentally, costs more than it would if all six of us went out to a nice dinner at a nice restaurant, but that's a whole different story), and when we sat down, there were two juvenile books sitting there on the table.
At first I thought someone had forgotten them, but eventually I picked one up, and there was a note inside saying something like "Reading is a gift. Please take this book and accept it." The books were Robin Hood and a novelization of the new Tinkerbell movie.
So we took, and promptly lost, them. I keep wondering if the person who left them there was sitting watching us do it.
Hilary, I don't know, my hard feelings might last all night.
Eh. Yours was better.
Matt, OMG, you're back! I've been debating e-mailing you for months. Should I? Would he think I was a dork?
I wonder if they were watching. People freak me out. I'm also reading "Perfume: a Murder Story". People really freak me out.
When I used to live in Nagoya, the few gaijins there at that time would meet at the mall near the tower to swap dog-earred paperbacks and then leave the extras to the kids and bums.Some of us just can't bear to throw away books, no matter how lousy they are.
Momo and I got a couple of pups last weekend - an akita (@75-85lbs) for momo and a boxer/whippet(40-50 lbs) for me. Except for all the poop, things are going OK. The akita is only a week and a half older than the other dog, but is almost 3x as big. She usually plays nice, but sometimes the boxer has to get mad. I've been sleeping with them for the last four nights, and they sleep right together. Tonight is their first night alone. I hope things work out OK. The akita is really aloof and might be hard to get to be obedient. The boxer/whippet is very friendly, but I'm worried he might get neurotic because the other dog is so much bigger than he is now. I can't wait until they're about 5 years old and well-trained. Later. Got to get up early tomorrow and go to Sam's Club for a pallet-load of paper towels, a couple of drums of Windex, and enough puppy chow to feed a small third-world nation.
imomomo
I'm so jealous. Gosh, I love dogs. I want to see a picture of both of them especially the whippet/boxer. We have an old boxer across the street and he has the awesomest personality. What are their names? Does Momo have pics up on flickr? I need to go check!
I bet he wanted some kid to pick them up. But he didn't trust you cause your a girl! ;o)
Too bad no one has taken them though. Don't the authorities come and clean that stuff up if it is there too long?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanakophotos/
Jupiter is the Akita. Yak is the mix.
imomomo
Oh, Ello, the police don't do anything like that here. Hell, they don't sweep up glass after a car accident.
Imomo, those are the cutest, most adorable, heart meltyfying puppies ever!!
OK, creepy old man. Creepy. And you might just be a little weird for following your son. He knew you were there right? Right? (hehehe, you make me laugh.)
Ha ha, actually I took the dog with me on my stakeout. The kid didn't get half way down the block before Cha ran out after him. Totally blew my cover.
Cha looks like a lot of fun. Dogs just project joy don't they? We could all take a lesson from them.
I'm leaning towards a benign explanation for those left-behind books. (Especially since they weren't naughty.)
Eek! I just posted a response and it didn't take...
Your story reminds me of all the times I got on trains in Japan and saw men reading pornography quite openly, cool as cucumbers. On one hand, the honesty of it was rather refreshing; on the other, I hated the way women were displayed like so many desserts for the delectation of any guy with 500 yen. And I hated my girls seeing it even more...
Oh crap -- I just noticed you have comment moderation! Delete one of those comments, Kappa -- whichever is fine. Delete this one too...
Frank, in the end two disappeared and one ended up water-logged and all soupy on the sidewalk.
Mary, the porn on the trains enrages me. But what gets my goat even more is a local video rental store we have here. They have a back door for the adult videos, a whole separate room. And yet still they put the overflow on the racks right next to say Doraemon and Ultraman.
I accidentally published one of those comments I was supposed to delete. Let's see if I can fix it...
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