HOT SUMMER
Yents and I spend the hotter days in my parents' garage, sniffing glue out of paper Dixie cups, convincing ourselves that we're feeling something. Boredom, most likely.
Yents is a foreign exchange student from Germany – the neighbors', not ours – and doesn't speak a lick of English. He just wandered into my garage one day.
WHITE GLUE
The bottle the glue is packaged in is either clear or white; I don't/will probably never know which. The ingredients consist of unpronounceable words. It is nontoxic and recommended by nine out of ten kindergarten teachers. The glue is manufactured in Switzerland. Its job is to keep things from falling apart, and for the most part it does it well.
NORTHERN SWITZERLAND
Switzerland, most specifically, northern Switzerland, where the glue is manufactured, is right on the border of Germany – not far from where Yents' family lives. He doesn't know this. If he did, would each sniff bring him closer to the sun-blackened forests and nomadic wanderings of the Rhine?
STUFFY FACTORY
In a glue factory on the border of Switzerland and Germany, in a small village, workers complain of poor ventilation. When the plant supervisor takes his breaks, the employees swim in the vats of cooling glue, white as bone and thick as jelly. The viscosity keeps them afloat.
On a hot day, late in June, a worker will get pulled under, a distant cousin of Yents. The employees, in collusion, will tell their supervisor that he quit suddenly. Yents' parents will mention the missing man in an email, and go on to say that the weather has been very fair of late. We will flip through channels on the TV, even though I know nothing is on and Yents can't understand it anyway. It will only be a matter of time before we're back in the garage, inhaling for everyone who's ever done us wrong.
Yents and I spend the hotter days in my parents' garage, sniffing glue out of paper Dixie cups, convincing ourselves that we're feeling something. Boredom, most likely.
Yents is a foreign exchange student from Germany – the neighbors', not ours – and doesn't speak a lick of English. He just wandered into my garage one day.
WHITE GLUE
The bottle the glue is packaged in is either clear or white; I don't/will probably never know which. The ingredients consist of unpronounceable words. It is nontoxic and recommended by nine out of ten kindergarten teachers. The glue is manufactured in Switzerland. Its job is to keep things from falling apart, and for the most part it does it well.
NORTHERN SWITZERLAND
Switzerland, most specifically, northern Switzerland, where the glue is manufactured, is right on the border of Germany – not far from where Yents' family lives. He doesn't know this. If he did, would each sniff bring him closer to the sun-blackened forests and nomadic wanderings of the Rhine?
STUFFY FACTORY
In a glue factory on the border of Switzerland and Germany, in a small village, workers complain of poor ventilation. When the plant supervisor takes his breaks, the employees swim in the vats of cooling glue, white as bone and thick as jelly. The viscosity keeps them afloat.
On a hot day, late in June, a worker will get pulled under, a distant cousin of Yents. The employees, in collusion, will tell their supervisor that he quit suddenly. Yents' parents will mention the missing man in an email, and go on to say that the weather has been very fair of late. We will flip through channels on the TV, even though I know nothing is on and Yents can't understand it anyway. It will only be a matter of time before we're back in the garage, inhaling for everyone who's ever done us wrong.
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