With each glance and every little movement, you show it

“Good morning, God bless you!”
This morning, the (presumed) homeless guy sitting on the stoop of someone else’s home was emphatically greeting everyone that passed with the same benediction. I replied with a half-assed “good morning” and a sad excuse for a smile, and was treated to a second helping of “Good morning, God bless you!” I had expected him to ask for any part of a dollar.

Usually, I have a seemingly random song stuck in my head for the bulk of the walk to work. Yesterday was the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Tuesday was John Parr, “St. Elmo’s Fire (Man in Motion).” Monday I can’t remember. Today was “Good morning, God bless you!” The phrase echoed. It’s a 32-minute walk.

I was thankful. Anything to rid myself of the imagery of last night’s dream, in which I was having sex with a much older co-worker in a greenhouse and my nephews kept barging in and threatening to tell my sister, then it started raining from the ceiling, then the mudslide hit. “Good morning, God bless you!”

By the time I got to work, I wanted to greet all of my coworkers with “Good morning, God bless you!” I don’t really believe in god, at least not the kind that blesses people whenever they want. Against my better judgment, I chose to keep the phrase to myself. The religious might think I was mocking them; the non-religious might think I had lost it. One or two people may have smiled.

Instead of going directly to my deskicle and feigning work until mealtime, I walked back to where some coworkers were gabbing about last night’s gala to which I was not invited (no hard feelings) and stood there with a goofy grin. “What’s with you?” they asked. My mouth may have said “Fuck off, a guy’s allowed to be in a good mood from time to time,” but the rest of my face was saying “Good morning, God bless you!”

Last Sunday while daytime drinking, I’m pretty sure I merely expressed a mild curiosity in reading this spin-off Hallmarks blog, yet the Lady of the Blog sent me an invitation to contribute. Like KIG, I assumed this was an accident. The title implies this is a blog for those who are Ladies or have insights into the identifying traits of Ladies and/or the mistakes they make. The palette suggests it’s for people who like pink. I can’t empathize with any of that. I do know that I often lack sound judgment and typically learn by stumbling.

Two years and eight months ago, I was having a particularly angry walk to work. I was down on the city. I had had it with angry car horns, angry bicycles flipping off cars, angry pedestrians flipping off bicycles. I gave up on the people of Philadelphia. I wanted to move. “Why is everyone so angry?” The thought circled like a hungry shark. Walking toward me was a tiny man, hobbled by age. “Nobody cares about anybody,” I thought. He was wearing a wool fedora in summer, shuffling along slowly, whistling. “People in this town don’t share the sidewalk.” He was from Mexico, maybe Colombia, possibly Peru. “My own neighbors don’t acknowledge each other on the street.” As the old man neared I could see the wrinkles carved by many decades of either smiling or squinting. I had never seen this man before in my life. As we passed, he looked me in the eye and spoke in a delightfully thick accent. “Hello, my friend, how are you?”