Bunny Ears

[Martin Hash]

You've seen those reindeer horns on a car during Christmas. Do you know there are also bat-wings for Halloween, and even bunny-ears for Easter, along with a pink nose on the hood & fluffy tail on the trunk? My wife, Gwynne, loves putting such paraphernalia on her vehicle during the holidays, so I was unsurprised when I went outside her mom's house, whom we were visiting, early in the morning for a ride to work in Oakland, California, that bunny ears had sprouted on her Prius overnight, obviously, since it was getting close to Easter after all, only a month away.

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Normally, I'm unfazed since my purple PT Cruiser is covered with large colored flowers & peace signs but this time I said something.
“I'm thinking having bunny ears on your car in East Oakland may not be a good idea...” I suggested, mildly, but Gwynne seemed unable to hear me. I just hesitated a moment, considering my options, then got quietly in the car.
“Don't roll down the back window,” Gwynne commanded, “the ears will fall out,” and we set off, the bunny-ears whistling in the wind.

Going anywhere or doing anything in Oakland is an exercise in navigation: to get from point A to point B, you must traverse a phalanx of panhandlers, bums, hobos, and all manner of people who you can no longer label for what they are. Some are quite aggressive, especially towards older White women like Gwynne.

Most of the indigents have their territories staked out: the same people in the same dirty rags are at the same off-ramps & street-corners every day. I noticed them all as Gwynne dropped me off at the hospital where I worked, and I noticed that they noticed me. I did not have a good feeling about this. “You watch where you park the car,” I warned, glancing at the bunny-ears but not mentioning them.
“I'm just going to Walmart to use the bathroom,” Gwynne assured me. “Then I'm going to the motel.

One especially pernicious beggar worked the Walmart parking lot riding a bike so he could get across the asphalt in the time it took to walk from your car to the store's door. When he saw old White woman, Gwynne, and the bunny ears, the parking-lot huckster peddled like a bat-out-of-hell to catch her.
He rode up, “Do you have any change?” he asked breathlessly.
“I'm sorry, no.”
“I could watch your car for a dollar?”
“No. But thank you very much for offering,” and Gwynne escaped into the store.

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I'm not sure why Walmart doesn't patrol it's parking lot in Oakland, or at least have cameras, but the miscreants certainly know that and when Gwynne came out, the side-window of her car had been broken and both of our backpacks stolen. Anyone who has lost a backpack knows what I'm talking about, so I won't go into the anguish & sense of violation, and those of you who haven't had your backpack stolen before, may the lord continue to look kindly upon you. I lost 3 months of my diary which I've never missed a day in for 35 years, but if I was going to lose 3 months of personal history, those in East Oakland would be the ones.

The old bike-riding extortionist peddled up. “Betcha wish you'd given me a dollar now, huh?”

Gwynne, determined & unrepentant, replied, “I still have my bunny ears.”