BAD LAD, SAD CITY

I failed a test of character today.

I was crossing the street next to a shrunken old Uke woman (at a crosswalk--Let's not be savages) returning from J. J. Peppers with cranberry juice and lemon soda to mix with the Stoli I bought earlier, when I stepped on a piece of garbage, then over it, and kept going.

I failed to pick up some litter? No. In keeping with the motifs of the day, the universe truly bent over backward to saddle me with karmic debt. 

You see, I noticed right away that the old woman was no longer keeping up next to me. She was no more than 5 feet tall and was carrying a few plastic bags; but I was listening to "Poetic Justice" by Kendrick Lamar and Drake and strolling, positively strolling, about as slowly as I ever have strolled and allocating most of my attention to simply willing myself into a better mood. Bottom line: I couldn't have lost her unless she'd stopped walking.

That's when I turned around and really saw her, five-foot-eleven on a yoga day and 150 years on this Earth, bending over on the middle of the crosswalk to pick up the piece of whatever that now bore the black sole-print of my cheeky salmon Vans. Over my shoulder, I took a closer look at the woman's plastic bags. There were three or four of them and they were filled to nearly bursting with things I could not identify and would sooner toss in the dumpster than try.

I remember stepping on the object in the crosswalk. But I don't remember looking at it when I did. It didn't occur to me that it had just dropped from her possession. It didn't occur to me that this was a thing a real, living, breathing person with pride would own. 

I stopped for a second and just watched. I wanted very badly to do anything else: I wanted most of all to call out, "Have I done this? I'm so sorry." I wanted to retrace my steps, to bend over and pick up the object, to take her bags from her weary arms and walk them and her to her home--I prayed she had a home. I didn't do it. I didn't do anything of the sort. There is your failure of courage. There is your failure of character. I thought about all of this and I just watched, embarrassed, then turned back around and went home.

In a fable, you just know that this sort of event would portend some tragic, and probably truncated, future, the provocation of some well-deserved curse. In Chicago, it's just Chicago.

Currently vibing to: the entirety of Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City by Kendrick Lamar