Best Boy stepped out on the porch on his way to work early yesterday morning and before I knew it, he was back in the door grabbing another coat. He said there was a woman out in the street with a tank top on. Way too curious for my own good, I had to check it out for myself. Sure enough in all the snow, ice and single digits there she was in a tank top, capri pants and slippers. It was the two other fashion accessories that really got me – a toothbrush in her mouth and a kitchen knife in her hand.
She needed to use a cell phone – could we help? Of course…that’s why Best Boy had come back for the coat in the first place. She dialed her number – commenting that he’d not answer anyway but left him a Tourettes induced voice mail. It was fairly obvious that she was higher than a kite as she explained that the knife was because she was dealing with a 300 lb.#$%&@*#$ in there! She thanked us for our kindness, slipped the coat off her shoulders and wandered back down the middle of the street to her house on the corner. We lingered long enough to see the door open and a lot of punctuated speech ballons like you see in the cartoons rose in the frigid air.
A few hours later I was at the grocery store when I overheard another interesting exchange.
“You out now?”
“Yeah, got out yesterday”
“You on parole or somethin’?”
“Yeah”
“How’s Rashida?”
“She good – you know I gots a baby by her now?”
“Yeah, I knew dat”
And within the next seconds someone else yelled across the aisles to the same person – “Sup cuz!” There was lots of happiness in all those “homecoming” exchanges with a language all their own.
This is my neighborhood – and I love it. The diversity reminds me that I live in a real world of real drama…more than the kind that happens within the confines of this hundred year old house. I had just heard a radio interview with someone from Detroit who said that when she saw The Wire she realized she wasn’t alone in the world. Other people were living her reality that was accurately depicted on the small screen.
It is far too easy to get caught up in my drama – the back and forth trips, the too vivid imagination when I am NOT there, two more weeks till the Dr. gets back, millions of things to do around a house and zero motivation to tackle them, and on and on.
At 10:30 – the same morning – I was out on the back deck shoveling for the gazillionth time when I heard some sweet sounds in the relative quiet of the morning. Feathered friends – living in the same ‘hood – busy about their lives. It is amazing sometimes that so much can be happening all at once in just a few blocks of real estate in a mid-sized city, in a county not far from the Lake, in a northern state of the United States, on the continent of North America. Just think of all the drama you could watch from space!
1eyedmonkee 