Whither Heart

I see strange things when I'm out and about. This is different from the strange things I see when confined to the home for a long stretch, as those are the product of isolation-prompted hysteria, but let me remain on the first kind. My own neighborhood is rich with odd occurrences, and while their high volume renders them largely unremarkable by definition, a few rise up to surpass the bar. In such cases, it would be criminal to keep them to myself and allow them to fade from the annals of history along with my memory.

Just one just incident transpired the other day, and while it may seem mundane enough, I find it peculiar indeed. I had just left an improv class and was standing outside with three fellow participants trying to tell a story about the Arizona state fair with little success. Not helping matters was the jeep which pulled up. Its occupants, which seemed to be a pair of young women, initially questioned us on whether we had been at the Starbuck's.

Now, this was happening around half past midnight, and I don't know what the practices of most such establishments are, but our local one had been closed for hours by that point. It further developed that they were looking for a lost wallet. If that doesn't do anything for you in terms of explaining the inciting query, that's only because there was never any illumination on that point. I guess that's irrelevant to understanding the thing, but I never miss an opportunity to fixate on the least salient element of a story.

While one of our number approached the car to offer assistance, I seized the opportunity to by turns complete my story and react with bemusement to the proceedings. It occurred to me that I was reacting with the cynicism and lack of compassion symptomatic of the hardened big city-dweller, and then became terrified at the prospect of being in dire straits and needing help from someone like myself and getting nothing but comical barbs from the peanut gallery. I resolved to suppress that unpleasant aspect of my nature in hopes of receiving the same favor from others. I guess the real incident actually unfolded in me, not out on that street.