I remember being 6 or 8 years old and seeing the most awesome rainbow that I’d ever seen.

And today a police officer questioned me for some time because I was standing in the empty parking lot of the All You Can Eat Catfish Seafood And Ribs Buffet while looking at another almost as good rainbow. Below is just a longer version of those events:

Actually two rainbows at the same time, in midafternoon. We were probably driving home from the grocery store or something. Mom stopped the car. We looked and looked and gawked in amazement. I remember the sky being otherworldly. Aliens could have landed and probed our ears with small bananas, held by the arms they had growing out of their faces and I wouldn’t have been shocked. ..Otherwordly to that extent was this particular amazing rainbow I have in my memory.

Today I saw a rainbow that definatley qualified to be in the top five rainbows I’ve ever seen.

Allow me to take care of some backstory.

Usually when I get home from work I sit, and eat, and do any of the 10 things that I like to do after work, all of which involve watching TV. Today, unusually, I felt like getting out and doing something when I got home, as typically the exercise I get at work from the riding of my bike or the walking around of myself in the rivermarket is just enough to silence the puny man who cries out inside me for meaningful physical labor but gets none and retreats ever deeper into my increasingly weakening nerd body, …but I haven’t been exercising at work lately as things have been busy at the job, and or, I have been lazy.

So I felt like I needed to do something outside of the tv and ice cream arena today, when I got home.

After some ice cream and tv, I asked DeAnja about going for a walk, but she didn’t want to. Her excuse consisted of something like: "I’m to busy cleaning up after you, …blah blah blah, ..why don’t you ever listen to me, blah blah blah etc" and some other things. I forget the rest; I wasn’t really paying attention.

Above paragraph was a joke and entirely false, though possibly quite true. Her true reason for not being able to walk with me partained to her being involved in cooking my/our/her supper; a supper that couldn’t be left unattended for the required time it would take for us to walk aimlessly throughout our giant apartment complex like we typicaly have done many times together in the past. Passersby assuming that we simply are without car for reason of finance, ..returning home from our jobs at the adjacent gas station, and or that perhaps our tv is broken and we have nothing left to do. Neither of which thank goodness are true.

DeAnja says she used to use a lot of run-on sentences when she was an early writer. I have much to learn from her.

..Continuing, ..


We live in Sherwood, a gem of a suburb of North Little Rock, which is a kind of red-headed stepchild of Little Rock, which lies the other side of the Arkansas river. Some of Sherwood is nice, if you can afford to live in a nice neighborhood, but most of it is pretty trashy and thrown together. Lots of signs and lots of parking lots and lots of people driving around cars. A typical American place where social interaction must involve shopping. Our apartment complex is bordered by an interstate highway and and a four lane street lined with burger joints, U-Store its and other esteemed community establishments.

On this afternoon I walked to the outskits of our complex, rounded the big metal apartment gate that defends it from outside forces, and tromped through an alley behind a department store to a small enclave of woods that have somehow survived until now but won’t for very much longer.

It had been a kind of wet and humid day. Wet grass will make your shoes and feet wet if you walk in it long enough. I walked through the grass and trees and found an opening with a small pond. A weird peaceful find. Pretty soon, emerging on the other side of the trees, I ended up in the back parking lot of a place that sells pools and spas. From there, walking back out to the access road that runs alongside the interstate, the sky started to get really nice and a rainbow began to appear, set to the soundtrack of the passing cars and trucks; people making their way home from a Wednesday workday.

By now I’ve made a half kind of circle, and am walking at an angle back towards my apartment. The sky continued to get really really tinted and orange; the kind of sky where there are lots of clouds on one side and not many on the opposite side of the horizon. The sun was setting and the rainbow I’d noticed from before started to get really bright and vivid. If that sky was a photo and were being edited in Photoshop, I would say that it’s color saturation was being turned up higher and higher yet still every passing minute. This wasn’t the ordinary rainbow from 10 minutes before.

I kept walking, watching the sky like I haven’t done in quite a while, passing a stripmall containing a furniture store and a place that sells used office machines, and continued until I stopped and sat down in the side parking lot of the "All You Can Eat Catfish Seafood And Ribs Buffet." This sky and rainbow was really something. I wished DeAnja were with me. She would’ve really been amazed. I even though about running the half mile or so back to my abode and grabbing my camera, but the scene wouldn’t have lasted that long.

So I stopped. And sat down on the sidewalk of the "All You Can Eat Catfish Seafood and Ribs Buffet," the interstate buzzing 100 feet away, and watched the sky in amazement at what I was seeing. The rainbow kept getting even more vivid. …incremental values of cool with each passing second. I saw several people driving by who were pointing it out to others in the car, but most people seemed predictably typically oblivious. A red truck slowed down and pulled into the parking lot, I assumed, so the people inside it could stop and look at this awesome rarity of a rainbow. When it did stop, an old lady in the passenger seat opened her door and puked all over one of those concrete parking-dividers. Then they took off.

This rainbow was amazing. I don’t know how to describe it. It was really special. I’m glad I was out there to see it.

I stood up and started to walk out of the parking lot of the "All You Can Eat Catfish Seafood And Ribs Buffet" towards DeAnja and apartment/birdhouse home, as simultaniously a patrol car pulled into the empty parking lot and creaked to a halt in front of me; the cop inside evidently calling to mind all the reasons why someone would be standing in an empty parking lot staring up at a rainbow besides the obvious.

He got out and reminded me that the parking lot of the "All You Can Eat Catfish Seafood And Ribs Buffet" was private property, that they weren’t open on this evening, and "Just what are you doing?" I pointed to the already fading rainbow and said "looking at that rainbow." He looked confused, and I could tell his brain couldn’t quite understand why someone would just be walking around and happen to stop and look at a rainbow.

Walking out of doors and looking at sky, evidently aren’t normal activities where I live. One could sympathise with police car man’s confusion.

Basicly this whole rainbow story ended up being a rant about how I hate where I live; It didn’t start out that way, but writing a lot and thinking a little bit kind of point me in that direction.
Just as well.

I really shouldn’t complain. That same day, for the last 30 minutes of work I played pingpong in a fancy downtown office overlooking the Little Rock skyline through a big nice window, and even on my little rainbow watching "All You Can Eat Catfish Seafood And Ribs Buffet" police officer altercation afternoon walk, …DeAnja was dillegently preparing my/our/her supper of steak and salad. She is very good to me.

No room to complain. But I’m glad we’ll soon be moving out of our Sherwood apartment and into a house.