Seymour Skinner has fallen on some hard times.
He’s only a few years away from retirement, but he still finds himself devoted to caring for his dear old mother, now completely within the clutches of senility. He knows she’ll soon need to be put into a nursing home, but unless he’s content with letting her rot in a state facility, he’ll need to shell out some serious coin to get her a spot somewhere nice. Over the years, Seymour has managed to provide for himself and his mother on the salary of a public school administrator, plus the occasional cheque from Uncle Sam on account of his service days. Now, however, he’s looking down the barrel of a financial nightmare.
Spending so much time caring for his mother, Seymour hasn’t paid too much attention to his own little nagging health concerns, like that persisting cough. However, when the coughing produces blood one morning, Seymour decides to bite the bullet and get a physical.
Then, his world is destroyed.
Cancer.
A diagnosis of lung cancer.
He’d smoked what, maybe 6 or 7 cigarettes in his entire life … How could this be?
Maybe Superintendent Chalmers was right. Maybe there was more asbestos in the insulation around his office than any other room in Springfield elementary. And Seymour was the one who had decided not to have it removed because it would take money away from the school’s cafeteria budget. Cruel irony.
He was told by the doctors that he had maybe had a year to live with treatment.
Three months without.
Visibly dejected, Seymour tries as best he can to go about his day-to-day life while attempting to conceive of some plan that could miraculously fix everything. At the Laundromat, he finds himself waiting in front of the dryer next to an off-duty Chief Wiggum.
Learning of his state of desperation, Wiggum decides to take Seymour’s mind off of things, if only for a little while. He suggests that Seymour join him for a ride-a-long in the squad car. Willing to take the risk of dying via stray bullet over cancer, Seymour agrees and that very weekend the two unlikely friends hit the streets of Springfield. As Wiggum explains, most of his work is routine. Traffic stops. Drunk and disorderlies. Cat-throwings.
Lately though, Wiggum says he’s been getting calls about violent breaking and enterings, gaunt bodies washing up in the ravine and an overall spike in drug trafficking. His theory? Meth had found its way to their fair city.
Attentive but mostly uninterested, Seymour listens to Wiggum, half convinced that the chief is exaggerating for the sake of drama. As if to prove the theory wrong, the police radio squaks at that very moment, calling all cars to respond to shots fired in a remote location out in Springfield’s badlands.
Wiggum tells Seymour to put his seatbelt on. With a flick of a switch, the siren is wailing and suddenly they’re burning red lights en route to the scene.
Just past the constant tire fire, Wiggum hangs a quick left, going off road into the desert-like terrain. In the distance, Seymour can see an old school bus with smoke seemingly coming out of every part of it. As they get closer, he sees a standoff taking place at that very moment. The police are exchanging fire with a long-haired freak sticking out of the driver’s window. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
