sightings

Back in the mid-eighties, in upstate South Carolina public schools - and I'm sure elsewhere - you could see boys with long, wide rattails, waved or permed, dropping from the back of an otherwise buzzcut scalp of blond-brown hair. 

And there he was, in my subway car this morning.  Not just the crimp-waved rattail, but the bored, slouchy attitude, the braces, the striped tshirt with the elasticity at the neck all given out, just hanging.  He pushes past the woman to exit first, his small rudeness not aggressive or hurried, just careless and selfish, shoulders plunging and rising with his loping gait.

Common 1980s middle school white trash.  Released back into the wild, after a thirty year hibernation.