The Probation

Wallace Walker was a good man. You could see it in his eyes, in the way he looked, in his behaviour – everything was screaming it. He was a rather short bloke, bald, with glasses, rather nerdy looking, insecure, and round-shouldered. Like many other good men, however, he made some bad decisions. Apparently, Dr Walker wasn’t familiar with the hospital regulations and more specifically – with the ‘don’t smoke marijuana in your office’ article. Oh, well, one learns from one’s mistakes. Dr Walker was no exception. He would never smoke marijuana in the hospital again. In fact, the only time he would set foot in a hospital again was when he was really sick.

Anyway, this isn’t a story about an endocrinologist who destroyed his career because of the one vice he had. This is a story about a man serving his time in favour of society. Due to the low severity of his ‘crime’ (and the fact that he was a doctor), the judge decided to be lenient and Wallace was sentenced on two weeks of community service. His licence was taken away, of course. After his two weeks of cleaning the filthy streets of London were over, he had to consider what to do. He had savings but they wouldn’t last forever. He was thanking God that his faience had left him – she cost him a fortune. What would he do? His life was over. As he was too cowardly to end it, he would look for other alternatives.

In his first day of probation, he went to the probation office to meet – you guessed it, his probation officer. He introduced himself. The probation officer was completely indifferent. He told him meet with the others from his group. His new crew for the next two weeks was rather interesting. One of the girls, Joan, was on probation for stabbing her boyfriend in the leg (or maybe it was her ex-boyfriend, or maybe her father – Wallace was too scared to pay attention). She was a temperamental, 20-year-old blonde with stunning looks but her many piercings and tattoos were a warning sign that she wasn’t Barbie. ‘What’cha staring at, Uncle Fester?’ – she asked aggressively when she noticed him looking at her. He moved his eyes right away.

Instinctively, he started searching for the probation worker but he was smoking a cigarette far from them, giving them time to get to know each other (or kill each other – they were scum to him he didn’t care). Wallace met another member of his team of failures – this time it was an intimidating young man, about 1,90 and looking like he could smash our good doctor with one hand. He had a tat on his face going all the way up to his short brown hair. ‘How’s it hanging, grandpa?’ Wallace didn’t know what to reply. He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to know.

The other two members of ‘Wallace’s band of misfits’ were twins. They must’ve shared the same brain when they were in their mother womb that got separated when they were born, because both of them looked half-intelligent. If you put them next to a monkey you would probably realise the monkey was smarter. Calling those identical idiots stupid was an insult to stupid people. They were just hanging around acting like morons. They were both about 1,80 with brown hairs and brown eyes. There was nothing really memorable about them (except for the stupidity, of course).

The probation officer approached them. ‘Come on, then. Those filthy streets won’t clean themselves.’ ‘Too bad; - the twins shouted in one voice and then started giggling.

‘It’s going to be long two weeks.’ Wallace thought.