JimSoft Insanitarium -> Insane Stories ->
Traffic Cones
By CrazyJim
It wasn’t my problem, but as usual I decided that I should get myself involved.
Always being one to help when somebody is about to be run over by a car, I
quickly reached for my backpack where I conveniently stored a set of orange
traffic cones.
Losing no time, I quickly laid the cones out, curving toward where the
unsuspecting pedestrian resided. After a painstaking five second process, I
stood back on the sidewalk and marvelled at my own magnificence as the car
screeched to a halt at the traffic lights, placed at a nice distance of ten
centimetres from my ingeniously designed detour.
I watched, dumbfounded, as my target crossed the strip of black tarmac, each
step like a nail through my fourth vertebrate from the base of my spine. I took
up the previous position of my missed prey and tried to work out what went
wrong.
I looked up and remembered the traffic lights. I sighed and looked down at the
sidewalk, reminiscing on my failed scheme. Suddenly, the traffic lights came
back into the forefront of my mind, just in time for me to look up at the now
green light and the full reality of the situation hit me.
I realised I never knew colliding with a situation could hurt that much. I spoke
several words of nonsense as I awoke, to which the doctor standing to my right
responded, “Yes… I… love you too…” and walked off, seemingly uncomfortable in my
presence.
He came back several seconds later, saying, “Oh, yeah… we had to amputate your
left leg and two fingers on your left hand.”
“Where are my cones?” I asked.
“Your what?”
“My cones… my traffic cones… are they Ok?”
“Oh… the traffic cones. The ones you used to re-route traffic in a failed
suicide attempt?”
“No… the ones I used to re-route traffic in a failed attempted murder…”
The suspense was killing me, and soon it did. However, the doctor soon managed
to awaken me by beating me with some metal paddles attached to wire.
“Damn,” I heard him grumble as I opened my eyes.
“What about my cones?” I asked, wearily.
“You ate your cones! We mentioned the word ‘traffic cone’ and you immediately
jumped up and screamed for ice cream.”
“You let me eat my CONES!?” I screamed in protest.
"We really had no choice in the matter.”
“Well, you obviously had the choice NOT TO!”
“You threatened us with three balls of lint you found in your pocket! What were
we to do?”
“Hmm… I see your point…”
The doctor seemed to have lost interest. He was talking and moving about
enthusiastically, seeming to be enjoying his conversation, but not making any
noise. I tried poking his eye to awaken him. He grabbed his eye with both hands
and started to mime screaming.
I watched in humorous awe as he stumbled back toward a pile of newly stacked
magazines, took a sudden left, bumped into a closed window, dropped several
pointy objects from his pocket, and got his hand attached to a beeping machine
of some form and started spasming wildly.
I laughed at his psychotic display of diplomatic tension toward the seemingly
energetic piece of rubber tubing he grasped in his right hand and was now
conversing with.
I was startled to hear a strange hissing coming from beneath me. I looked down
and noticed a flow of clear liquid flowing from a curved piece of metal which
was attached to a white basin-type object that reminded me of a similar object I
once got my head glued to in the process of washing out the glue that I had
mistaken for sunscreen the previous day.
I looked where my hand was resting and noticed that the activating device was
attached to it by the three remaining fingers on my left hand.
I put down the piece of rubber tubing and walked out of the bathroom. Looking
behind me as I left, I noticed a stick-figure image of a cross-dressing man.
Ten days later I was free to return to my road construction job. It was nearly
my lunch break once more, so I wandered off to the nearest pedestrian crossing I
could find. Out of my backpack, I pulled several more traffic cones and
proceeded to lay them out in a similar pattern to my last attempt.
Taking a seat on a conveniently placed park bench, I watched as a lone
pedestrian walked up to the crossing. He glanced over to me, “Hey, what’s this
about?”
I stood up, glad somebody was taking an interest for once. “Well, it’s this new
business I invented. I set up traffic cones to divert cars onto the footpath,” I
pushed him out of the way, “so when people stand here, they—”
©
2003 JimSoft