She had bangs and then some.

I was involved in an incident, yesterday.  On campus.

Completely by accident, mind you.

Here’s the back story: So, each afternoon, I teach Comp. I. which is a sheer delight, as all students love this class. In order for me to even consider getting through the first fifteen minutes of it, I either pretend to shoot up, or crumble beneath the slightest suggestive thought of having a Diet Coke.

Don’t worry: I recycle. (Except the pretend needles; those I throw away).

I terribly needed a Diet Coke, yesterday. The thrill of Scooba had gotten to me. (Even despite the very real thrill of NYC, looming as a terrible and magnificent threat in my near future).

I dug around in my car for the requisite 65 cents.

I found said 65 cents.

I then walked into the hallway at Stennis Hall, where my Comp. I classes are always held, and proceeded to put the two quarters, one dime, and a nickel into the vending machine. You might recall that my past experiences with vending machines haven’t always been positive; this one will be no different.

Still, I rely on them.

I slid the change down the shoot, and pressed the larger-than-necessary button for my Diet Coke.

And nothing happened. No exciting tumble of the aluminum can on plastic drop slide. No pending concern for the rush of carbonation and spew of soft drink that I wait for each afternoon, so violent is the delivery of the can from the machine.

I once sprayed both myself and a mystery student, who was standing too close behind me, when I popped the top of a Diet Coke a few weeks back, over the mouth of the garbage can. I was secretly pleased with myself, for doing it.

These vending machines here, they usually mean business. You will get your can of soda, and you will get it with possible detriment, if not a fear of absolution. The cans come rumbling down with such veracity that I fully believe you could point the lip of them at the side of a house and power-wash it.

Thank goodness the vending machine’s depository isn’t any higher, or I might have no choice but to stay single or adopt.

Except yesterday, the machines had nothing to say, or well this one didn’t.  Because it wouldn’t work. There wasn’t even a hint or a tease of my can rolling down. I’d put my money in and not one thing had moved.

“Did it eat your money?”

 I turned around and standing directly behind me was a tower of red hair; slightly beneath that , was a woman in a beige plaid dress, white belt and pleather flats. Her hose of choice was, perhaps at some point, what once passed as hose. Though that day was long gone, now.

And there on top of her hair were bangs.

Correction: Bangs.

This woman had bangs that did not stand to Reason. I couldn’t figure them out. Did she fashion them out of cheap turf grass that she’d also painted red, OR had they simply been hair-spray trained to such height and width as a form of self-defense?

I just couldn’t tell, but either way, they were intimidating. They were so large and massive that they’d caused satellites of other adjoining hairs to orbit around them in their own styles.

In this case, her bangs had their own chicken wings.

I didn’t know her, had never met her, and yet, I was determined to do whatever she told me to do. I instantly believed that not only could she rope a small calf with a jerk of her head, but also that if anyone could get my Diet Coke out of this vending machine, it would be she.

“I’m afraid so,” I sheepishly responded.

“Well. Did you kick it?”

“Excuse me?”

She said, again, “Did you kick the thing?”

I told her No, that I’d not tried to kick “the thing.”

“That’s how you gotta treat it. Kick it.”

I did as she asked. I kicked it, lightly, at the bottom of the machine.

She and all her bangs tsked me.

“Harder.”

I kicked it harder. A little bit. I’m not one to exert myself physically in a professional environment, especially when such exertion requires beating up a vending machine.

“Nah-uh. Like this, watch. Like this.”

And what followed this announcement brought the attention of every person in the building. Office doors flung open, faculty and staff emerged from their haze of academia and Farmville, and everyone came out into the hall to witness the debacle of me witnessing the debacle of Rough Rider Reba kicking the spitfire hell out of the lone vending machine in Stennis Hall’s foyer.

She kicked and kicked and kicked until the plastic coating of the machine itself bent, tore, and broke into itself. I’m afraid she wouldn’t have stopped unless the Faculty Advisor for the Student Christian Fellowship approached her and whispered something to her: a prayer, a threat, a list of names of those who aren’t attending weekly chapel, I don’t know, but it stopped her.

Her poorly-hosed leg came down and once again, her flats were together. She turned to me and apologized, which I found ridiculously funny and had to pinch the inside of my palms to keep from laughing out loud.

It was hard to look at her.

A moment passed.

She then offered me a Diet Coke.

She had plenty in her office refrigerator, she said. What?

“This way,” she grunted.

I kept my thoughts to myself, and wordlessly, followed.

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