Harlan Foster

And Along Came Me



Posted: Tuesday, January 05, 2010

by Harlan Foster
Very Good Company

Didja ever see a piece of string just hanging from some place as you walked by on a public sidewalk? I mean a piece of string hanging over the sidewalk and you're the sap who sees the string and what's worse, you're the one who pulls it. Has that ever happened to you? Well, I hope I'm not the only one who has been through an episode like that. But if I am, lemme tellya about my fix.

It was in the early seventies in Orange County, California and I was walking along a moderately trafficked street in Irvine. There was a lot of construction going on then. The route I was walking took me off the main road and into a business or manufacturing neighborhood. The builders were the only ones working then and most of the buildings weren't finished, yet. I was on my way to meet the owner of a business that was going to be operating soon. On my way to meet him at his new building, I passed a building under construction with about five floors. There was the usual scaffold made of pipes that plasterers and painters use when they work at varying altitudes on the side of building. The plasterers were working that morning; they had taken the precaution of creating an overhead over the sidewalk so anyone passing beneath the structure would not have wet plaster drop on their heads.

I know there were other people who had passed by the same place I was passing by now, because I could see them up ahead. But because I'm me and not someone else, I saw string dangling from the overhead structure and immediately stopped and looked up. I could not see the end of the string above me. Like the impetuous fool I can be at times, I pulled the string and after some time, realized I had done the wrong thing.

Simultaneously, at the instant I pulled the string, I heard a blood-curdling scream, glass breaking and the sound of gun shots. I was transfixed; could not move; looking up, watching, listening, expecting to see a body drop through the scaffolding structure to the sidewalk upon which I stood,. There was a very brief instant of silence, then the distant sound of a siren. I looked around me, actually scared for what I could not understand was happening. As I looked around, there was another scream, more shots and this time, instead of breaking glass, was the sound of something heavy hitting what sounded like the pipe structure above me. Had I time to realize it then, I would have felt the perspiration on my face and running down my back. But then, I was far too busy wondering what was happening. Any second, I expected to see police cars and the ambulance pulling up beside me. Nothing like that occurred. But what did happen really turned me to mush.

There was laughter. Not just one person laughing but several. I couldn't tell how many were laughing because of my stressed condition but it sounded like several men, from the sound of the laugh. It took about a minute to realize it was me at whom they were laughing. It was my reaction to the sounds that had been staged, obviously triggered by my pulling the string. Within seconds, some of the men on the structure above me had descended to the sidewalk and were grabbing my hand, slapping my shoulder and congratulating me on being so gullible. For a moment I felt foolish. Then I, too, began to laugh. The men explained to me they had been waiting for someone curious enough to pull the string. It was connected to a type of signal that alerted them to begin the recording. They were just waiting. And along came me.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)
» left by Jack H. Schick
 2 years 137 days ago.
99 fans.
I get so tired of the long list of boring articles. Thanks for a comic relief. I was a little uncomfortable with the language in the first paragraph (lemme tellya).
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