The aftermath of learning
Much has transpired since our last visit to Logtown. Richie was suspended from teaching until this week, and relieved of his cafeteria duties. Fletcher also recently completed a suspension for discrepancies concerning expense reports, though not fired. Finding a replacement for the Logtown beat is not an easy task - there's a longer line of applicants to be Pigpen's personal groomer. Simon, happily, did not get suspended. But he's been receiving very guarded reactions from everyone since he came out as a vegisexual, and students have taken to leaving various vegetable products on his desk as jokes. You shouldn't need a narrator to figure out he's not reacting well to this...
Richie was alone in the trailer, enjoying his 'Chaotic' DVDs, when Simon burst in with a corncob in his hand. He looked only slightly crazed, but highly annoyed.
"I laughed when I got the cantelope," Simon said, brandishing the shucked ear of corn, "but this isn't right. I'm not gay! What do they think I'm going to do with this?"
Richie had taken advantage of Simon's focused rant to flip the TV back to the cable. Simon hadn't noticed, but now it was on Oprah. You win some, you don't lose others as badly as you could have...
"I don't want to think about it," Richie commented, flipping open his silver Zippo to light the cigarette that had been hanging from his lip since Simon entered, and now it has stuck there. "Maybe they meant for you to do whatever it is you do to make creamed corn out of that."
Simon's face relaxed to ponder that thought, but only for a moment. "That's crap." He pitched the ear of corn towards the kitchen and deposited himself next to Richie on the sofa. "Oprah?"
Richie had gotten too involved unsticking the cigarette from his lip to change the channel. This one wasn't too painful. "Hey, I drove past your apartment today, and that Halloween pumpkin is still on your porch. You plan on getting rid of that?"
Simon's look told Richie that nobody had been thinking about that pumpkin in months. But what Simon had been thinking about that pumpkin made Simon's eyes glaze in a way that gave Richie delayed goose bumps.
"That pumpkin only had one hole in it, didn't it?"