Adventures in Dog Walking

While I was walking a dog, a stranger walked towards me and bellowed, "Hey, buddy! How’s it going?"

I whispered to Samson, the dog, "Start growling" as I sized him up. His shirt was tucked into his pants, so I put him on for only 5% homeless. Low probability also for asking for directions: 15%. When most people ask for directions, they put the greeting and request in the same sentence. If they’re lost, they’re also late and don’t have time for chit-chat.

Although he may have been a crazy person as he looked like he was wearing mascara, my gut told me he was selling something. But what? Religion? Magazines? Political cause? The overly-friendly greeting was plausible for all three possibilities, but I needed more information to determine whether he was scary happy (religion), desperate happy (magazines), or fake happy (political cause).

He said something, but I didn’t hear him because I was trying to figure out what type of weirdo he was. Samson, who I trained to have a healthy suspicion of people not carrying treats, began barking. He halted his approach and laughed.

"I like dogs, but he doesn’t look too friendly today."

"That’s right," I said, as I stared him down. I thought about asking if he had a napkin to wipe the upcoming foam from Samson’s mouth, but felt I didn’t need to go there yet.

"We finally got a break from this heat, huh?" he said.

I reviewed my response for possible openings to other avenues of conversation before uttering it: "Yup." I felt a twang of guilt for being unfriendly, but if potential crazy man thought I was going to show any weakness, he could remove the “potential” from his name.

We had a minute of uncomfortable chit-chat when I had was passes for an epiphany nowadays: "Hey, this guy is the bare-bones friendly!" I let my guard down and thought of ways to engage him in conversation. "Do you live around here? Do you have any pets? Do you..."

"Well, see ya later buddy!"

What? Talk about being hasty. He only gave me a minute to figure out it was safe to interact with. Perhaps that’s an eternity in a place like Alabama, but in the crime-ridden streets of Northern Virginia, that’s barely enough time to take your hand off your pistol.

If you’re waiting for a pithy conclusion that sums up a revelation about life or myself that this experience taught me, you’ll have to go somewhere else. And that somewhere else is right after this sentence. What I learned from my interaction from fake crazy man is...

I’m not serious, of course. I haven’t learned anything from life yet, and I’m not going to ruin the streak now.