(re-run)
It is the first of January, a new year, and a beautiful sunny day. I have ascended the hill in my greenbelt and am stepping onto the public sidewalk along a busy street. There is a man, a half a block away standing in the middle of the sidewalk, looking down at his phone. He isn’t moving at all.
We’ve encountered many a dog walker, distracted by their phones, standing still while their dog waits to continue on. This man has no dog, and he isn’t moving. We are getting closer. As a senior citizen I don’t like stepping into the street, but if I don’t, we will crash right into him.
I step down off the curb, but my dog is like, Hey, this is my once daily walk, and I’m enjoying myself. Buddy, get out of my way. As she appears in the man’s peripheral vision, he jumps, startled by the black lab sniffing at his phone.
“Morning!” I say as we pass him and I step back up to the sidewalk.
“Morning,” he mumbles, still distracted by whatever is on his tiny phone screen. Football stats? The Rose parade? A dear John text?
One will never know. The sky is bright blue, the hills are turning green. The air is sweet from the rain, the grass shimmering with last night’s dew. Why in the world does anyone take a SCREEN WITH THEM WHEN THEY WALK? What is wrong with people these days?
I mean, I have a smart phone, and I use it to send texts, get directions, or actually speak with someone. I don’t read newspapers on the phone or play games or anything else. I use my laptop for those things during a finite time every day, not constantly.
I have a friend who sends a text and if she doesn’t hear back within 90 seconds, she sends another one with question marks? Seriously? 90 seconds? What if I was on the pot, having a bowel movement? What if I was chatting with a neighbor or ordering something online? What if my agent was calling with a three-book offer? Surely she doesn’t think that her text is the most important thing for me to attend to, does she?
What if I was walking my dog with my cell phone squarely in my back pocket where it belongs? I used to grab every phone call when Sis was alive because it could’ve been her care home, a doctor, a social worker, or an insurance person. But now phone calls are mostly scammers, like the guy with the Indian accent who says, “This is Medicare calling. What is your address and birthday?”
Seriously? First of all, Medicare doesn’t call, and secondly, I’m not giving you my address or birthday, Raj. Medicare already knows those things. I’m not falling for your scamming ways.
I’m too busy looking at the trees, like the four liquid ambers that still have red and golden leaves on them, even though all the other trees are bare. Or I’m studying the guy leaving a former friend’s house at 10:00 a.m. I’m glad to see they’re still together. Or I’m figuring out how I’m going to maneuver around the young family blocking the entire sidewalk with their stroller, dog and two little girls. They are blocking the path to get back to the greenbelt.
I cut through the wet grass to avoid the young family and come up to a man with a fluff dog.
“She’s not that friendly,” I say about my 50-pound lab.
“We’ll just wait over here,” he says, pulling his dog off the sidewalk.
She used to be a nicer dog, before I adopted the crazy Jack Rusell.
Maybe the stone-still guy was looking at dogs to adopt from ARF, and that’s why he was a bent-over statue in the middle of the sidewalk. Maybe he loved the Jack Russell in the photo but heard they can be difficult to train and keep busy . . .
And he would be correct.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 