getting hosed
i want to explain about the time i got hosed (and on the meantime help you to see the circumstances surrounding it).
it happened under that gargantuan Ford insignia protruding over the post-industrial town called Ford City, that cobalt blue oval with white lettering, one of the last places you really see cursive writing, brooding over town residents as they lined up single-file to punch in. it blended into that smog-addled industrial cityscape. nobody thought about that giant logo, or the fact that they lived in Ford City. they just lived there, without thinking about it.
a boxer would tell you that getting hosed was that instant when your opponent got a shot on you edgewise, when that effervescently-outlined black shape blinds you like lightning, something you gladly dished out to playground bullies: "she got hosed," meant i wrong her brain out through her ears, you don’t mess with a boxer. most times it happened by mistake, a reflex from getting pushed a little too hard, a terrible accident that one trained for, lest they should lose their control and unload on themselves. some were not so lucky.
what was it that caused that self-destructive reflex in the young citizens of Ford City? for one thing, there was poverty. joblessness made locals wonder why policymakers opened the floodgates to the cultural deluge of working aged men and women and their in-laws, why local watering holes overnight turned into punjabi restaurants, why the international aisle gradually became two and then three and then whole supermarkets opened up selling shampoo that looks like clumps of sand, milk beverages, places that made the neighborhood smell of sourdough flatbread every day during shift-change, at exactly 3pm.
some resented this and others rode the wave, expanding their tastes. myself, this cultural hosing resulted in my being laid-off. it could have been worse.
it gave me the time to take care that neither i nor those young boxers in Ford City should lose the battle and accidently hose themselves.
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