The Ballad of No-Pants

His nickname was No-Pants, and he liked to drive around in a brown poop-smudge of a UPS truck five days a week. Thing is, No-Pants wasn't actually a delivery man. He just really liked PRETENDING to be. Most of us move out of this stage once we hit puberty and playing "banker" or "waiter" or "cowboy" or "whore" with our childhood friends just isn't entertaining anymore. But apparently he never reached this point. So every day, he dragged his tired rearend out of his postage-stamp bed in the morning, scooted off to wriggle into the UPS uniform that his mother had so carefully sewn him when he was just turning 18, and ran out to his poop-smudge of a truck (he'd spent one summer painting it very precisely to the hue and details of your typical UPS truck) to deliver his "packages." Really he just drove up and down the streets near my work. We'd see him at least two or three times a day, just driving. And occasionally he'd jump out of his truck and run urgently towards a building with an empty box, as though he was running late in delivering it. And whenever he saw us, he'd smile, give a toss of his hand through the air, and run back to his truck, his brown shorts blowing tightly against his legs as he speedily ran. To nowhere. To deliver nothing.

His name was No-Pants.

-------