Work-Walk Interlude

On the walk to work today, there was a somewhat deranged-looking individual walking ahead of me. he was flinging his arms around over his head like michael stipe in a music video and gabbing on in varying degrees of loudness. As I was about to lap him (my purposeful walk towards work was faster than his crazy-man-shuffle) I put my ipod in my bag just for fear that he would somehow attack me and i'd need both hands to disentangle myself. (it wasn't a real fear, but the reports that ppl are being stabbed for their ipods has put me on high alert and the risk of dropping Senor pod if I were to be frightened by an arm fling was just too great.)

Here enters player 3 in our little sidewalk psychodrama. A black man in an obviously expensive suit is about 20 feet in front of Deranged and was watching me put away my ipod. I guess he thought I was putting it away because of him because he was giving me a look, but then realization dawned on his face when I passed Deranged with a slightly quickening step that it was actually the arm-flinger that i was afraid of. Heck, by the look of his suit, he could buy and sell me several times over- what would he want with Senor Pod? When I passed Expensive Suit, apparently the teams had shifted from white ppl (me and Deranged) v. black person to sane ppl v. ... questionable person. he smiled and said "That guy's a little off" and I said "Well that's an understatement." o the power of body language.


I always feel bad for people who are on the streets when they should be in a hospital. There but for the grace of God, eh?