The groaning. Constant complaining. It is never ceasing. He complains just for conversation. He converses just to converse. It never ceases. Its painfully awkward hearing him babble. The words spoken have no meaning, no thought. He does not think about his words, they just happen. It’s a reaction, a primordial instinct to fill the void of silence. He is uncomfortable about his situation. You can see it in his eyes, he waited to the last minute to do the assignment. You know he wishes he hadn't, but he cant help it. He is a slave to his own habits. I go to check to the schedule board to see if there are any cases I can watch. He follows me. I go sit down in another location... he is still there, haunting me. Im not sure what to do, they never teach you how to react in a situation like this in the boy scouts. I look to my notebook and start writing my thoughts. I think maybe if he see’s me writing that he will leave me be. Again, he doesnt take the hint.
He is a nat, buzzing about, blissfully unaware of the annoyance that it is causing. Like a fly he doesnt leave me be.
I need to add quarters to the parking meeter outside. This assignment is taking longer than expected due to the lack of criminal cases. I rise to leave. He asks me where I’m going, i mumble something about quarters and parking tickets. I can tell that he wants to come with me, but I caught him off guard and head to the elevator quickly. I have escaped.
I walk to my car gingerly, knowing that when i returned I would be right back in his clutches. I enjoyed the silence. I wish I had brought my headphones, that is always a sure way of keeping people from talking to you. I, like some others I suppose, do not necessarily listen to music on my headphones. Occasionally I will just stick the plug into my pocket, the headphones not connected to anything, yet I wear them so that people assume I cannot hear them. This is the primary reason I use headphones rather than earbuds. Headphones leave no doubt in peoples minds that im listening to music, unless of course you are blind, in that case you wouldnt see me anyway so you wouldnt talk to me unless I made my presence known.
I return to the court lobby and proceed through the security checkpoint. I overhear one of the guards talking to another say something about getting his GED in a few weeks. I wonder to myself if they feel any contempt or jealousy towards the wealthy lawyers that pass through their checkpoint on a daily basis. I then wonder if maybe the lawyers are jealous of the guards.
When I reach the fifth floor I head straight to the bathroom. I had drank a coffee a few minutes before. I sat on my throne content with the near silence of the secluded bathroom.
I exited the bathroom and walked to the hallway where the courtrooms were. I made sure not to look at him in the eye for fear that he would try and continue whatever meaningless conversation we had had going previously. Earlier, before I knew that he was a gad fly, I had asked him if he had gotten tickets to saturdays football game. Unfortunately I had unintentionally gave him the seeds to much of his complaining. He kept mentioning how he had skipped getting tickets to be bored in a courtroom hall. I thought to myself how ignorant a statement this was. He arrived at the courthouse at roughly the same time as I, and i had managed to get tickets.
I sat down on a bench distant from the one he was sitting on. Another student was there.... another procrastinator, maybe someone who can take the burden of listening to this fools nonsense. My hopes went unfulfilled. For a few minutes I thought that i had acquired a second nat. The first nat told the second nat the same idiotic statement he had told me repeatedly earlier, the one about the tickets.
I sat in the hall for a bit. The second nat had left after following me from bulletin board to bulletin board, bench to bench. I think he got bored because he left, telling us how he wasnt going to waste any further time. If not of the first nat, I think i would have thought of the second nat as more of a puppy because he wasnt nearly as annoying and seemed to grasp reality better.
I get up to leave to go to the fourth floor, maybe there are some cases being tried down there. The nat follows me. I quickly check the case schedule on the forth floor and find that none of them are suitable for the assignment. People are bustling about in this hall, i imagine the gad fly is really a fly and that he attaches himself to some other persons festering wound of annoyance.
Without a word I head to the first floor. The fly is faithfully behind me, buzzing away about boredom and football tickets. The lobby of the first floor is a large an open space. The kind of space that if a stranger is within ten feet of yourself it feels odd. The gad fly is well within this zone... he is in the best friends forever zone. In order to shake him, and get him to exit the building, i head towards the exit.
Like a American fighter pilot flying over vietnam, trying to shake the soviet built MIG Fighter jet, I suddenly change trajectory towards the large central lobby desk. He is a better pilot than I. My efforts were fruitless. He kept on my tail like nothing had even happened.
The lady at the front desk is a very small grandma like character that has makeup on that screams at the world how she is in denial about her age. She might not have looked so petite if it wasnt for the massive desk she sat at, it was a true monolith. When I asked her if there was any criminal cases happening she replied in a sweet southern accent, the same kind as that typical hard working waitress that works in the old dinner across the street, the same waitress that knows what you want to order before you do. It was opposite to the NASCAR attending tea party member type of southern accent.
I went to the second floor and sat down on one of the hall benches. He sits as well. Too close for comfort. I briefly return to my own imagination. The police arrive, arrest the gad fly for invasion of personal space and charge him with general annoyance of the public as well. I snap out of this thought when I hear the gad fly say something to a broish looking character sitting on the bench across from us. As their dialogue continues I am snapped back five years in bro boys life. It is summer between his freshman and sophomore year of high school. He has just come to the realization that he can change the way he dresses, attempt to change his friends and change his hobbies in order to seek approval. He is an actor, a facade. His existence is shallow. He used to be the gadfly, but now he is a gadfly dressed up as a bro. I knew that all I needed was a flyswatter in order to shatter his whole show.
The time is up. Court is starting. No one but the officials can talk in there. I didnt have to hear the mindless chattering of gadfly. The defense attorney starts to speak...
