Spouse and I were late going to work this morning, as planned – Spouse had a date with a masked man intent on drilling holes in her teeth; meanwhile, I was waiting at home for delivery of some exercise equipment we ordered.
It was an odd start to the day, because the delivery truck driver was more than a little hesitant to bring his truck up the drive outside the house. Now, don’t take what follows as any suggestion that I would be able to do any better, but I had to immediately begin wondering about this guy’s level of skill. It seems to me that “maneuvering a very large vehicle around in unfamiliar surroundings and around obstacles” is pretty much the key member of the desired skill set for a delivery truck driver. Like I said, it’s not so much that I think I could do better than this guy – I don’t – but I have seen other truck drivers get their trucks up and down the drive without a hint of a problem, while navigating around more obstacles too. The fact that this guy apparently had like no confidence in his ability to avoid crushing the Probe – tucked away in its usual spot on the “gulch” side of the driveway – caused me no end of concern about this guy’s abilities. He gave off the aura less of a “driver” and more of a “bemused passenger.” The other thing that was weird about this guy was that he had this extremely thick Russian accent. Anyway, at 8:00 this morning, as it turned out, I was out front of the house in my pajamas helping this guy unload a giant box from the back of a truck that was parked part of the way up my driveway. All of these things – his furtive uncertainty, his thick accent, and the two of us struggling with a heavy load – left me feeling like a character from The Sopranos, struggling to conceal a body after a Monday morning whacking.
Once the delivery was safely in the house, our troubled teamster departed, and Spouse returned from the dentist, we were making some lunch when we heard a thump on one of the front windows. This particular thump, unfortunately, is all too recognizable to us after living almost a year in this house; it was the sound of a bird hurtling into one of the windows. Thankfully, most of the window strikes we get don’t seem to be fatal. I don’t think the birds generally get up enough speed to really hurt themselves. Anyway, we hear this type of thump rather frequently; we don’t, however, usually hear it coming from the front windows. A quick look through the window to the snow below revealed the wayward avian lying in the snow. He didn’t appear to be breathing, and was kind of planted face first in the snow, with one of his wings still extended awkwardly. Spouse opined that the bird, if still living, might be suffocating in the snow. I hurriedly put on my boots and headed outside, clambered through the garden (no mean feat with all the snow we’ve got) and scooped up the little creature in my hand. He perked right up but was obviously stunned; he turned his head to face me and managed to fold his wings back up, but was in no condition to fly. I had to pluck a feather that was sticking crazily out of one of his eye sockets. Spouse arrived in the nick of time with a shoebox lined with tissue paper. We put the little bird in the makeshift nest with a handful of black sunflower seeds (hey, who doesn’t want a snack after making an ass out of himself?) and left him alone on a table on the front porch. A few minutes later, Spouse saw the little bird fly somewhat erratically away and land in a tree.
When we were driving down Main Street on our way in to work, I spotted a guy leaning up against a lamp post. He had one arm extended up the side of the post high over his head and he was half bent at the waist. With his other arm, he was placing one finger to the right side of his nose. Too late, I recognized the gesture from a thousand hockey rinks across this great land, and just as we passed by his location, our eyes locked as he closed his mouth and exhaled abruptly, blowing the most massive piece of snot out of his left nostril that a person is ever likely to see. I am so glad I was there to chronicle the moment.
It was only a little after noon and I felt like I was living inside a David Lynch movie.
As I tend to do when left to my own devices, I was wandering through the thrifts of North Park — there used to be a whole row of them on University, but with the closure of one of the bigger ones — Alliance for African Assistance, which used to occupy a former Woolworth’s storefront — some of the joy has gone out of it; that and the increasing gentrification of the neighborhood (instead of being honked at by crappy Fords, I’m now honked at by shiny BMWs) have kept me away for a while.
Regardless, the thrifts are still a bit like a catalog of mental illness; I was confronted by a shirtless man for having stared a few moments too long, but I couldn’t tell if it was me or the world in general after a while, as the muttering never stopped.
Spouse and I are lucky enough to work in downtown Hamilton, large portions of which – on an ongoing and continuous basis, mind you – are to mental illness what a Busker Festival is to street performance. There are an assortment of regulars, screaming obscenities, shaking fists, grimy and (in the truest sense of the word) pathetic.
There is one fellow, though, who always catches my eye and brings a smile to my face. He is about 5’10” and weighs about 250 pounds. His face is round and his head is close-shaven. He wears glasses that mold to the bulbous curves of his face and have the kind of “teardrop” shape of aviator’s glasses. He never speaks a word, but is always striding down the street in a purposeful manner with a broad smile permanently inscribed on his face. He walks with one arm raised high above his shoulder, one clenched fist above the top of his head tightly grasping an iPod around its vertical axis. He never lowers the iPod and he never raises his other arm. As he walks, the spring in his step is very obviously choreographed to the music presumably playing on his iPod; every so often, he emphasizes some unheard portion of the music by slowly but passionately punching at the air with the iPod-holding hand.
I’ve never seen this guy bother anyone. He seems like the most consistently happy person in all of Hamilton.
I think you’ve got to define happiness for yourself, but that guy sure sounds a lot happier than most. It’s devilishly hard to ignore; I remember walking through Seattle’s International District with my dad once as he fended off an aggressive panhandler and feeling incredibly uncomfortable so that I find myself slipping small bills and change into my pockets so that I can’t honestly say no when asked now.