60 Swami Skinrash, thumb twidler

Reluctant Dissenter #2 acknowledged society might feel bicycle riders like himself were spazzes, but it was ratiocination working his head. The prospect of separating from the pack made his gut grab. Intellect told him to leave baby Drew alone; his heart told him to go with the flow. The readiest compromise was not to get into baby Drew’s face. That would be egregious, he admitted, proud of himself in a split second for fitting in the impressive word seamlessly. His college degree had been his parents’ money well spent. He patted himself on the back and patted himself on the back, then snapped to from the sesquipedalian ideation. It would be conspicuously wrong to pounce; perhaps unfair was a better way of putting it. The little boy had, in fact, killed two bicyclists, so pouncing would simply be a speeded-up version of ultimate justice, given the capital crime. “Eradication of a human life!” he mused as if in a legal proceeding. A peculiar word, but as he visualized the framed diploma hung behind his desk, he equivocated, finally came down, and concluded it was another coup in his way with words. Of course, it begged the question whether the little boy considered bicycle riders human. Reluctant Dissenter #2 laughed at that. “Of course I’m human, a college graduate!” Bicycles and baccalaureates! The glory! The suffusion of collective will among the well-heeled on two wheels warmed him.
A compromise was to trip the little boy from behind. No matter how he massaged the arguments, for a man of forty who weighed over two hundred pounds and stood six feet two, to jump on a child about three feet tall and reputedly two years ten months old, was probably wrong. At that moment, #2 didn’t have the time his Personal Enhancement adult education class would have recommended for a good decision; there was no time to gather a consensus nor, finally, draw a logical conclusion. He decided it was better to err on the side of caution and stuck out his leg. He caught baby Drew by the ankles, “. . . obviating the salient effected by tiny white projectiles.” Quite often, RD#2 mentally rehearsed his side of conversations-to-be, so he’d always keep up with the group.
The other Reluctant Dissenters were less scrupulous, and pounced with glee, as a pack, a complete perversion of Oneness as revealed by Swami Skinrash, who twidled this thumbs.
Baby Drew stumbled flat on his back, stunned for a second. His baby gurgles would never pierce the screams, shouts, pathological cursing and vulgarities by these typical bicyclists. Alain de Tochigi, the Frisco Ninja, was inclined by simple humanity to help, but he followed his orders to just observe. The other baby oddly withdrew to concentrate on swallowing great amounts of formula.
Thirty bicyclists created another ceiling in the Plip Plop Coffe Shop.
The little fellow, paragon of friendly poolside fashion, was on his own.