Wending my way from abode to workplace each morning is an experience roughly like driving a bumper car down the freeway or tapdancing around hidden land mines. I’m so relieved and happy to arrive unmolested that I have trouble remembering what it was that made the trek such an adventure.

Let me go back ten minutes in time and examine what happened:

I’m grateful for the smiles. The clerk at the pharmacy is so pleasant and anxious to please that I just can’t help smiling right back. She always asks if anyone ever told me I look like George Carlin. I always reply that she’s the only one, but that I’ll take it as a compliment.

A close-cropped-hair young man stands at the corner outside the pharmacy and begins his panhandler routine. I just say no and wonder how he affords the cigarettes and cell phone if he needs to solicit.

There’s a sign at the corner, FUNKY FISH FRY, which is three days out of date. If I’m to enjoy the fish, I’ll need to re-tool the time machine.

At the post office, the clerk is all smiley and friendly today, primarily because I drew the one who knows how to converse. We have a good, informative time. Yet another smile.

I drop my laundry off and have a pleasant interchange with the employee, who by now knows way too much about me, since she’s been cleaning my clothes for decades. That’s yet another smile.

Driving on toward the shop, I have a revelation—one that I can share at a speech I’m giving this evening. My generation says DUH (pronounced DUUUUUHHH, as in stupid). This generation says DUH (pronounced sharply, DUH!, as in disdainful). There must be some metaphor there. Another smile, this time from me. 

Two large ladies, lawfirm employees, never see me, though I walk past within inches of them outside the shop each day. All they can concentrate on are the cigarettes they’re frantically puffing on, and the gossip they are loudly sharing. All I can concentrate on is not inhaling, since secondary smoke is inescapable on my block.

I finally arrive at the front door and get a special, gigantic smile from the Piggly Wiggly mascot head in the show window. Within seconds, I’ll be safe from dread, boredom, addiction, neediness and superficial patter, all of which I’ve experienced between home and store.

For a few seconds, I’ll be peaceful and secure.

Then, I’ll roll the stone from before the entrance and open myself again to the World, the friendly shoppers, the saber-tooth tigers and the constant surprises that I later can write about on my little computer screen, just for you

(c) 2012 A.D. by Jim Reed

http://www.jimreedbooks.com