I kick the walk button at the corner and wait to cross. Everything is set up for hand control, but I have started to think we should set more things up for feet. When the light changes, I venture into the street a little distance from the actual crosswalk. Fellow humans are walking from the other side and I am just playing it safe. A man turning right at the light has to wait for me to reach the other side before he can press on the gas. He leans toward an open passenger side window and hollers at me. I can't quite decipher what he says. "You know that mask isn't helping. Why don't you go to hell? Why don't you go help them? Hey, nice skull mask."
He maybe said one of these things or none of them. I rearrange the sounds in my mind to make some sense of what words went with his urgent expression. I have no idea and am not interested in asking him. I frustrate myself by wasting anytime trying to figure it out. I walk on, returning to my daydreams. Then his 1980s machismo car drives by, and I hear him shout out the window again. I am walking the opposite direction of his previous turn, so he had to have changed course to get his mumbling point across to me. Too bad for him, his words are lost on me again, and I am almost home.
He maybe said one of these things or none of them. I rearrange the sounds in my mind to make some sense of what words went with his urgent expression. I have no idea and am not interested in asking him. I frustrate myself by wasting anytime trying to figure it out. I walk on, returning to my daydreams. Then his 1980s machismo car drives by, and I hear him shout out the window again. I am walking the opposite direction of his previous turn, so he had to have changed course to get his mumbling point across to me. Too bad for him, his words are lost on me again, and I am almost home.
