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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I was waiting for the bus, a bit past 9 PM.
"Shit, lightning," said a teenage boy to three others. He said it fast, almost like "shit lightning" - either deeply unsatisfactory lightning or sporadically luminescent poop. He was excited about the lightning, too - worried that it would be raining in the West Island. "I bet it's raining at my house right now," he said.
It made me smile from my exalted vantage point of being twelve years older. Clearly (or obscurely) it was dark, and in the dark, you can see lightning from pretty far away, especially if the sky is like it was and only partly clouded over.
Another flash and I caught a better glimpse: sheet lightning, not shit lightning. It repeated. A bit of forked tongue. Sheet as veil over veins of white.
"It's coming from the same cloud," said one of the kids. "Or like the same bunches of clouds." Becoming sensible to its beauty, one boy snapped a photo with his phone.
The lightning stayed far away, the bus approached, and we got on. I reflected that I often liked the way teenagers talked: casual if self-conscious, jumping from idea to idea. Lightning. Sometimes shit lightning, but still lightning. "You're being cringey," said one to another.
"I'm just like that when I'm with you guys," the responder responded. "When I'm with other people I'm not cringey... well, like, sort of but not really."
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