So I was walking down the street this morning and I got an unusual greeting.
"Top o' the morning to ya! Ya a good irishman or an englishman?"
The voice was a spike that jutted suddenly and awkwardly into my condensed chamber of isolated thought, a piercing nail that stopped all concentrated introspection and pulled me back into the real world.
The tone of voice was what caught me off guard. It had an easy, natural delivery, smooth around the edges and warm at it's core. Unmistakably irish, but by no means genuine, it had the false clarity of Americanization, acting experience, or good ol fashioned crazy.
The voice was it's own artificial green. I had to look up.
He had a smiling, red, pockmarked face, wearing a weathered black cap and dull teal shirt. I recognized him immediately.
He's a local bum on this stretch of Ventura, whose wanderings make up the territory between White Oak and Reseda. I've seen him sleeping in the shade of the buildings around here in broad daylight, like a tired dog taking some unwanted space for four hours before returning to his humble prowl.
I say bum because he's hardly a hobo. I've never seen him carry anything. He's always wearing the same clothes, but they're not tattered or ragged; worn is a better term.
He's almost kind of dressed like my Dad when he works in the backyard. That's probably why I smiled.
Looking back I'm kind of disappointed at my response: There wasn't really one to speak of.
But I was struck with an immidiate grin. He himself was smiling, had a natural good humor to him, his eyes doing that absurd sparkle that authors like to write about when they discuss kindly old men or starstruck lovers. It was a very real smile, and I could hear it in his plastic accent. It was the most real thing I've heard in weeks.
He seemed happy to see me. He didn't know me, doesn't know me, likely never really will. But he saw my red hair, my forward-brim cap, and green striped button-up and probably assumed I was a pretty good guy. Or at least a pretty Irish guy.
I fumbled my words as I desperately tried to manage an adequete response.
He was sitting next to another guy, a construction worker, I think. They were having breakfast of some kind, which looked like a sandwich of some sort. There were some other construction guys building some elaborate advertisement atop the office building, the pair sitting comfortably on the bricks of some disguised, ritzy cafe where a busy mother juggled four kids and an angry jewish couple scowled at the world over their coffee.
I don't really remember much beyond him and the structure. The structure only really gets credit because I walk by it sometimes several times a day. I know what it looks like.
I know what he looks like, too. Not just in general, but in that particular moment in time.
"uh um yeah" my hobbled words hardly merit any capitalization nor even punctuation. I was that twisted. I looked back and met his smile with mine. "um errrrr uh good n uh irish!" Whatever I said, I finished it off on a high note.
It was wierd. It made me happy.
Walking past him, going down the lonliest part of the walk, Newcastle Avenue itself, with it's morning patrol of old Jews barking yiddish at one another in all manners of joy, frustration, idleness, or exhaustion I came to wonder: Why did that man make me smile so easily?
Perhaps it was the sudden, random interest in someone possibly familliar? A random smile from someone who, by all modern intents and purposes, should not have any reason to do so? Maybe the troubled inquiry of a man with no one to talk with? No, can't be the case, he was talking with the gentleman next to him before I even got close.
Or was he? I've spent all morning looking at the ground or staring off into space.
Perhaps that was it. That a man like him could be so happy?
No, simpler than that, less profound.
It was that he was happy.
As real as his madness or his honest joy. He was happy. For three seconds it was shared with me, and I carried it all the way home.
Sitting here in my uncomfortable office chair, staring at my grungy computer screen in my blank-walled studio flat, I know exactly what I would have said.
I know exactly what to say, if I ever see him again, and I'm sure I will. He's not exactly a stranger to these parts.
"Nah" I'll say, with an honest, shy smile, "Not English, but not Irish either."
I'll give a nod, tip my hat, an honest smile with an honest answer:
"Scottish"
Tags: people
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