Just another Friday afternoon in Oak Grove. A parable.

This really happened. I was standing outside the Buy-Rite Grocery Store, talking to the owner, Joe. There was some kind of commotion down the street. A couple guys were shouting at each other. This is not as uncommon an occurrence as you might imagine in the hamlet of Oak Grove, Oregon. Joe and I paused our conversation. We looked down the street to see what the hullabaloo was about.

A large overweight man without a shirt was walking slowly toward us on the sidewalk. He had his head tilted back, face to the sky, eyes scrunched shut. His arms were stretched out straight in front of him like a sleepwalker. In addition to being overweight, the man was tall, easily 6'3". He had a buzz cut, and my first impression of him was of a large, drunken bumble-bee. His associate, about twenty feet in front of him, shouted instructions: "Left! Straight! Right!"

By this time, the first guy had reached us. He had a strange, shambling gait that indicated some sort of disability, but whether this was mental or physical was hard to say.

"What the hell is his problem?" asked Joe.

"Something happened to him last night, I'm not sure." said the guy

"I can't believe I let you talk me into this!" shouted the large man, bumping into the handicap rail in front of my office, which is across the street from the Buy-Rite. I imagined what word Emily Dickinson would have used to described how the man's fish-white belly jiggled in the warm light of a September afternoon.

"What the fuck?" said Joe.

I decided Emily would have used the word unseemly.

I bid farewell to Joe. I walked out in the bike lane to avoid the large man who was by then veering from side to side in the crosswalk on Arista Avenue. From my car, I watched a couple teenaged girls coming down the sidewalk toward him. Predictably, they stepped out into the street to avoid a collision. The disabled guy and the big guy made it to the Buy-Rite and walked inside.

As I made my way home on my afternoon commute (1/5 of a mile), it occurred to me that I had witnessed an almost Jesus-quality parable about Fox News and their loyal viewers: mentally disabled individuals shouting instructions to drunken people who choose not to use their own eyes. I believe Emily would have used the word unseemly to describe such a phenomenon.