Explosive

I was waiting for a train near Coolidge Corner when I heard a kid answer his cell phone:

"What's going on man? Explosive."

Explosive? He said it almost immediately after the "what's going on man?", almost making the question mark inappropriate, because any reader would assume a large pause due to the punctuation. It was amazing, and I loved it.

I was excited to use it on someone I knew, and I settled on Newland Sturgis III, a Boston Brahmin I once knew when we competed over the same girl back when we were 18. I was a poor boy from Brockton and I wooed the girl by singing Hall and Oates's "Rich Girl", which I'd heard Hall wrote to woo another girl away from the heir to the Burger King fortune. It worked for me too, only I received a black eye from Mr. Sturgis III because I impugned his sexuality.

"Hey, what's up man? Explosive."

"Explosive? What the hell are you talking about?"

"You don't know? Well I won't tell you if you don't know."

"Whatever. Listen man, I'm glad I bumped into you, because I'm in AA right now, and I'm at the stage where I've got to apologize for things I've done to wrong people in my past."

"Oh, and you want to apologize for the shiner you gave me over Julie Becker?"

"No, I want to apologize for doing your mom."

"Funny..."

"No, I'm serious. I went to your house to pay you to leave Julie alone, and your mom was there, and she was wasted, and you know..."

Explosive.