A moment I was there for and don’t understand.

I work in a not so great part of town. Today I had some training to attend in a much better part of town. Days like this are a nice break for a lot of reasons, including just seeing some new stuff.

I see you, now what are you up to with these?

As I was driving in this morning on a fairly busy street in a more affluent part of town I saw a man, standing on the sidewalk facing traffic. He had a pretty substantial bouquet of flowers in his hand and a sign he made on a piece of printer paper with large black letters.

This definately fell into the seeing new stuff category.  I could see him for some distance as I drove toward him.  He stood looking at the passing cars. As I got close and the traffic light he was near turned red he folded his sign, creased it and stood there uncomfortably.

Sometimes I see things, and this is a good example of one, where I decide

Not the guy. Not the sign. But a guy with a sign

there must be some story to what I see and I would like to know what it is. In this case it probably would have  been easy to roll down the window and ask what he was doing. The flaw in that plan is that I don’t get to decide what the story is based on my own preconcieved notions.

The approach and sitting there at the light looking at him gave me plenty of time to come up with ideas about why he was there.

At first, I thought he was making an impressive effort to gain the attention of someone he really liked. He was doing something I couldn’t see myself doing. How many cars had he looked hopefully into in search of that one special person?

But when he folded up the sign he looked kind of sheepish. Clearly he wasn’t there to touch someones heart. He was put up to this stunt. That’s it, he lost a bet. The poor guy. Man, I do feel bad for him. Got to admire that he kept his end of the bet when he lost. Wait, is that…yes, he looks kind of angry.

Hey man, it's just not meant to be. Move on.

She won’t take his calls anymore, he’s crossed the line one time too many. Good for her. No one ought to live like that. Now he’s out here with this grand gesture figuring she’ll see him on her way in to work. It’s late in rush hour, shes not coming this way. Maybe she just stayed home. He is not happy. That’s what you get man, you abusive stalkerish jerk.

The horn behind me let me know the light was green. Who knows how long. He turned and headed for a nearby parking lot, I drove on.

I have a snapshot of his life, it’s anyones guess what it depicts.

---