Thread Roulette: Paint It

[Event !]

Paul Wilkerson and Rory Lennox are removing graffiti from downtown and chalking the side walk with positive messages.

[Rory Lennox]

Rory loved to draw…when she had time. She wasn’t the best artist, but her drawings usually weren’t that bad. And she used to draw with chalk all the time when she was little. Granted that was a long time ago, but she didn’t think it was going to be that hard to chalk up the sidewalks with fun and colorful messages. She’d spent last night looking up inspirational quotes to write down so that they would all be original. She was sure that the people of Pilot Ridge would get tired of reading the same old stuff every few feet.

And she was paired with Paul! She was one of the lucky students to be paired with someone she was friends with. Not that Rory minded talking to strangers, she’d probably talk to almost anyone, but it was always fun to work with someone who you knew you'd get along with.

They were also tasked with cleaning up the graffiti off the walls, which was a…less fun task, but Rory could see why it was necessary. Some of that stuff was pretty ugly, and Pilot Ridge was such a cute little town. It would definitely look a lot cuter once all that stuff was off the walls. Still, all that stuff was a lot of work for just two people.

She turned to Paul, bouncing up and down in her sneakers. “Which do you want to do first?” She asked. Personally, she thought they should clean up the graffiti first because that would probably take the longest, and they would get the least fun task out of the way first.

[Paul Wilkerson]

Paul and his mother had signed up for community service. The thought was that the two of them would have been together, but it didn’t happen. Instead Paul was assigned to clean up the graffiti with…Rory. Paul was little nervous about who he was going to be paired up. Not that it was hard for to make friends. He was worried that his partner might have been at least twice his age. Nope. Paul got paired up with a friend.

For the next thing for Paul to worry about was how to wash graffiti. Paul had always thought graffiti was going to stay forever. He didn’t think there was a way to wash it off without painting over it. With the power of the internet he learned it was possible to wash the eyesores away. Most of the ways included a power hose.

“Why don’t we clean first.” It made the most sense to clean first and then have fun decorating.

[Rory Lennox]

Rory was glad that Paul had the same thoughts that she did, otherwise she’d have to waste time convincing him why it’d be better if they cleaned first. “Right, we can get the hard stuff out of the way first.” She was hoping that taking the paint off wouldn’t be that hard, but it would definitely take a little more elbow grease then chalking the sidewalks.

“Do you have the cleaning supplies?” They’d been given special chemical cleaning supplies that would help remove the paint, and masks so that they wouldn’t breath it all in. Personally, Rory thought that was a little intense for two young teenagers, but she never backed away from a challenge! And then they were supposed to spray it all off with the power hose, so that the chemicals wouldn’t linger on the walls.

That seemed really intense…for Rory anyway. Maybe she’d just let Paul handle the power washing.

She skipped ahead to where they were instructed to start, dropping her backpack on the sidewalk. “Come on, Paul!” She called over her shoulder, pulling her long hair up into a ponytail. She didn’t want to get any harsh chemicals in her hair. That would be bad.

[Paul Wilkerson]

"Yup." Paul had two buckets in his hands. One bucket had the chemical cleaning solution. The other one had the masks, gloves, brushes, rags, spray bottles, and other things that they might need. The portable power hose sat next to him. Paul reached into the bucket and pulled out a mask and a pair of gloves to give to Rory. "Here."

Paul read the label on the bottle. "So, we just spray it on the wall?"

He slipped on the gloves and put the mask on. Pau felt like a mad scientist. "It's ALIVE! Mwahahaha!" He rubbed his hands together. He looked over to Rory to see her reaction.

[Rory Lennox]

“Thanks.” Rory said, reaching for the gloves and mask once she’d put her hair up. She wasn’t really too thrilled with the fact that they had to wear gloves and a mask, but apparently the chemicals were pretty corrosive. Rory didn’t want to breath it all in or get it all over her hands if they were super poisonous. Safety first.

“I think we just spray the painted parts.” Rory said, putting her gloves on and picking up a bottle. That would make sense right? There’s no use spraying a corrosive chemical all over the whole wall if it was only needed for a specific section.

Rory looked over at Paul, raising an eyebrow at his mad scientist impression. “Yeah…maybe I should be the one handling the chemicals.” She said with a light laugh. “You can work the power hose.” Rory didn’t know how to do that anyway, so she hoped Paul did.

She put her mask up to her face, glancing back at Paul to make sure he was ready. She turned back and sprayed the portion of the wall that was covered in graffiti, making sure to spray all of the paint, but also taking care to go get it on too much of the rest of the wall. She backed away, wrinkling her nose at the smell. It was pretty strong, even though her mask.

“Kay, your turn.”

[Paul Wilkerson]

"Yesth masthor," Paul imitated Igor with a lips. He hunched over and shuffled over to the power hose like he had a bummed out leg. Paul looked back at Rory. "Okay. I'll stop now." Paul checked out the power hose while Rory took care of the wall. It was pretty simple. Flip the switch and pull the trigger. Easy as pie.

He flipped the switch. Paul pointed the nozzle at the ground and pulled the trigger. He let go of the trigger quick and jumped back. The water splashed back. "Okay, going to have to watch out for that." Standing back at a farther distance. He started at the top. To his surprise the graffiti was coming off. "It worked!" Why wouldn't it work? "This might be easier than we thought."

[Rory Lennox]

Rory shook her head at Paul’s antics, rolling her eyes. But she was smiling too. It was kind of funny, even though she really barely registered the reference. She knew it was from some TV show or movie, but she’d never watched enough television to get the exact reference. Was it from an old Scooby Doo episode? She assumed that would probably be her best guess.

She backed up next to Paul so she wouldn’t get caught in the crossfire. However, when he tested it on the ground, a spray of water splashed back up on her sneakers and legs. She jumped, letting out a surprised squeak. “Yeah, be careful.” She said, wiping the droplets off. It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it just took Rory by surprise. She wasn’t expecting it.

But it appeared after that one mishap that Paul had gotten the hang of it, and surprisingly the paint started coming right off. They might have to scrub at a bit of it with the paper towels to get all of it off, but it definitely didn’t seem like it was going to require as much work as she originally thought.

“Yeah, hopefully it’ll be easy and then we can move onto the drawing part.” Because obviously that was the more fun part. She walked ahead, moving to the next block to spray a rather large spray-painted symbol. What the symbol was for, she had no idea. Some people drew some pretty stupid stuff.

[Paul Wilkerson]

Paul finished with the hose. While Rory moved on to the next one, Paul scrubbed off the remaining stubborn little spots. Between the chemicals solution, the water, and a little bit of elbow grease the remaining stubborn paint came off. He gave the wall a a quick water wash. This job was going to be easy. But of course the both of them had said this was going to be easy. They might just as easily jinx themselves.

He grabbed the remaining stiff and scurried after Rory. "Masthor wait for me!" Paul called after her. He got the power hose ready again. Then he attacked the graffiti. Again there were a few spots that needed some elbow grease.

"Hey, do you know how big the area we are cleaning?" He didn't know if they were just cleaning a few blocks, or this area then more on to another, or they were going around cleaning up as much as possible. Maybe Paul should of paid more attention to the organizers for the details.

[Rory Lennox]

Rory leaned in closer, examining the drawing. The paint was already starting to come off with just the chemicals, which was a good thing. It would have taken them a long time to paint over all of this graffiti, and some of it didn’t look like it could be painted over. They’d have to get all different colors to match the sides of the buildings, which would be obnoxious. This way was much easier.

She glanced down at the bottle, skimming over the ingredients on the label. It was a bunch of long, scientific words that Rory would probably have a hard time pronouncing correctly. Must be pretty strong stuff though.

“Keep up, Paul!” She chirped, already moving to another spot down the wall a bit. “I think we’re just doing the downtown area. There’s other groups that are getting the rest of the town.” Which meant that their section had to be the cleanest and the prettiest when it came time to start chalking. Not that it was a competition or anything, but…it like, really was.

“So, like, from here all the way to the hair salon at the end of the road.” That was probably about ten or twelve blocks maybe? Maybe a few more. So if they worked quickly, they could probably finish cleaning the walls in about an hour…probably more like two, but Rory could be optimistic!

[Paul Wilkerson]

"If we keep up this pace then we'll be done in no time." Things were looking promising. It looked like they weren't going to spend all day washing walls. There were going to get to the fun drawing stuff. Paul's drawing skills lacked greatly. Paul was no Picasso. He mostly just doodled in his notebooks when he was bored in class. "We're on a roll."

It really didn't matter. It was chalk so it wasn't like his drawings were going to stay forever. It was going to stay until rainfall. The purpose of his crapy drawings were to brighten Pilot Ridge and give the people something pleasant to look at.

[Rory Lennox]

“Hopefully.” Rory said, with a nod. They were moving pretty quickly right now, but it would still probably take a bit, if only because they still had over ten blocks to clean. And who knew how much graffiti was down there? Hopefully they had enough of this cleaning product to finish the job.

It seemed like there was a lot in here though, so Rory figured she could worry about that if it started to feel like it was low, and they still had a lot of work left to do. For now, they could just focus on getting all this paint off the walls. “Yeah, the faster we finish it, the faster we can start drawing.” Rory couldn’t wait to start that, and she had all the chalk in her backpack.

She wasn’t the best at drawing, but she thought it would still be fun, especially because they were told to draw inspirational messages and stuff, which would look so cute. And all the colors she had on her bag would definitely make the town look sooooo much nicer. “What are you going to draw, Paul?” She asked, as she sprayed another section of the wall, careful not to get any of the chemicals on herself. Of course, Rory already knew what she was going to draw. Hopefully it would look as good on the sidewalk as it did in her head.

[Paul Wilkerson]

Paul thought about the question. There wasn’t anything in particular Paul had in mind. There wasn’t anything Paul went out of his way practicing his drawing skills. The teenage boy was going to wing it. “Don’t know. I think I’m going write inspiring messages. Maybe a doodle here and there.”

Paul continued following Rory and her cleaning spray. He’d power hosed the paint and chemicals off the wall. After x amount of hours the two were finally done with their section. They could finally get to coloring Pilot Ridge. He put away the power hose. “What are you going to draw?” He asked when the chalk got busted out.

[Rory Lennox]

Finally. They were done with their portion of the downtown. All the graffiti was scrubbed off and the streets looked sparkling, if she said so herself. Well, maybe not sparkling. Some of these buildings really just needed another coat of paint, but it did look better than this morning. But once they whipped that chalk out, the streets would really look amazing. Hopefully.

“I looked up quotes online last night and wrote them down. You can look at them too if you want.” Rory offered, motioning to her backpack where there was a few pieces of paper with inspirational quotes written on them, along with the box of chalk.

“I’m not really the best at drawing, so I hope it comes out okay.” Rory’s artistic abilities were definitely centered around her dancing, and not in any type of painting or drawing. But she did have nice handwriting, so at least if she was writing something it would look nice.

She pulled a piece of hot pink chalk out of its box, before kneeling down on the sidewalk, contemplating what she wanted to write and how she wanted it to look. Too much silence bored her though, and since it was pretty early in the morning, there weren’t too many people on the streets yet. A little small talk while they worked wouldn’t put them behind schedule.

“What are you doing for the summer, Paul?” Rory asked. She was pretty nosy, so she liked to know people’s plans for things like summer vacation. Even though the break wasn’t as long as normal, it was still enough time to do something fun.

[Paul Wilkerson]

Paul took one of the papers from Rory's bag. He looked over the quotes Rory collected. Stop wishing. Start doing. He was going to the use that one. Paul took the red chalk. Paul was going to write, "stop" in red and "start" in green. He hadn't decided what color to write "wishing" and "doing" yet. He took a few steps away from Rory so all the drawings and writings wouldn't be all clustered together.

Paul sat down on the sidewalk and started writing. The last time Paul drew with chalk was when he was a kid. He and his sister would color the driveway or the sidewalk in front of their house. The worst thing about chalk was when it got down to a little nub. And when one used the little nub would scrape their knuckles on the ground.

"Just hang around here. We don't do anything spectacular. I think my parents are going to try to convince me to get a job for summer." Paul had mixed feelings about having a job. He didn't want the responsibility, but he would like to earn some money. "What are you doing?"