There’s this guy on my block who is always walking around, grumbling and growling and laughing to himself. He’s tall, his hair is wild, and he walks around with his eyes cast down, mostly, sometimes pulling on a cigarette as he grumbles along. He’s such a permanent fixture of the neighborhood that I’ve long since stopped worrying about him, even though I’ve never heard an intelligible word out of his mouth–and he’s never responded to a single hello. So this morning as I was switching the car seats around, he walks by on the sidewalk behind me. Suddenly he stopped, mid-growl, and said, clear as the morning sun, “Say, do you have the time?”
Scared the bejeezus out of me.
