Protest

Curtis sat in the cubicle designated for the person in his position as an urban planner at City Hall. He had on his little collared Oxford. His was a very light pink, because he was cool like that. He had on his little slacks and expensive shoes. His hair looked very neat. He alternated between his computer screen and his drafting table. Nobody liked the amount of parking planned for the neighborhoods in and around a sports center that the mayor had committed to see built.

It felt a little on the hot side in City Hall that day.

Curtis worked hard, so he didn’t notice immediately when his colleagues began to get up from their desks and go to the windows. People could be distracted by about anything, in Curtis’s opinion. He didn’t approve. He stuck to work.

People kept getting up and leaving their desks, and they all quietly babbled about what they saw. Their voices sounded alarmed. It got Curtis’s attention.

Curtis set his pencil down, got up, straightened his tie and went over to the window. He pushed his way to the front so he could see.

He saw bicyclists, in-line skaters and skateboarders outside surrounding the building. They were cruising around it in circles. He could not see all of them. It looked as though they had set up a complete perimeter. It looked like their may have been two hundred of them.

He saw them zigging and zagging around each other. He saw them hopping up and down on benches, up and down on curbs.

Then he saw a small team of young men and women come out and rip all the little attachments the city had installed on the stonework to prevent skating out. They had the tools for it and everything.

Curtis blinked and the numbers had doubled.

He blinked again and they had quadrupled. Bicyclists, in-line skaters and skateboarders streamed in from all directions. They had no signs or placards. They didn’t yell. They simply circled the place and hopped on top of and crushed anything they wanted to.

As the numbers got too many, the BMX and Mountain Bike riders started hopping up on top of cars, bouncing from car to car. Crushing rooftops. Sometimes crushing windshields. The riders all looked very angry.

Curtis stood frozen in the window until he realized that they could see him there just as he saw them, so then…

He woke up.

Curtis sat up in bed and rubbed his eyes. He looked around his little efficiency apartment at his Tony Hawk and Lance Armstrong posters. He saw his bike helmet lying on the floor not far from his off-road skateboard. And his courier bag, because that’s what he did for a living: delivered stuff on a bike. His bike was downstairs in the bike closet the building provided.

He sat trying to figure out his dream. Had it been a good one or had it been a nightmare?