People in my neighborhood:

1)  The other week when I was out walking around on a warm summer’s day to go do some errands, there were a ton of (very skinny) (cracked out) (white) people hanging out in the doorways of the buildings here and there that look very low rent, and I got the hunch that they were all junkies.

2)  At the Dollar Store, the (younger) (hispanic) (male) cashier had this crazy hairdye job, where his hair was a very red shade of reddish-orange, but edged off more towards orange and even bleached out yellow towards the edges, and I couldn’t help but look at it, it looked so fresh and stylish and cool.

“I got to say,” I was like, “Your hair looks very hip.”

“Thanks,” he was like, “But I’m actually dying it back to black.”

“No way!”, I was like.  “Why?”

“I dyed it get it out of my system,” he was like, “But now my girlfriend’s parents said I can’t see their daughter unless I change it.”

“Weird,” I was like.  “Are they evangelical?”

“No,” he was like, “Catholic.  But they see themselves as a model family for everyone that they know.”

“Weird,” I was like.  “You should dye part of your hair white and another part blue, and then when they get on you, you should say, ‘You guys are being anti-American, you should set a better example for the neighbors, stop being so anti-American.’”

At that, he laughed.

“Maybe,” he was like.

3)  The other week when I was coming home from the beach, I was walking across the street of the main business strip, and this (40-something) (skinny) (white) guy in a ball cap rides across the street in the opposite direction, and then passes me and I heard a noise, and when I turn around I not only see that he missed the handicap ramp up onto the sidewalk and hit the curb instead and fell over, but that he also has a beer bottle in his hand that he’s somehow managed to keep upright and not let fall and shatter on the sidewalk or at least tip over and spill out all his beer.

“You all right, man?”, I called out from the other side of the street, where I had now gotten to.

“Yeah,” he called back.

Then, he noticed what had happened and suddenly became embarrassed.

“I planned that, man, I planned that!”, he called out to me.

 

4)  The other week in the middle of the day on a Saturday as I was coming home from the grocery store laden down with groceries, I’m waiting at the corner of a major intersection for the light to change so I can walk home, and I hear from nowhere the sound of the song “Masquerade” from “Phantom of the Opera’ coming from somewhere, and this (older) (skinny) (white) guy standing next to me in a thin blue wifebeater that hangs down just straight down off his frame seems to notice it too, and we both look around and both notice around the same time that it’s coming from a car on the opposite side of the street.

Then, as the light changes, we start crossing the street, and as the car starts to pass us, we not only hear that the people in the car are singing along to the song playing off of the car stereo, but look in, and it’s four young guys, all of different races, one (white) guy one (black) guy one (hispanic) guy and one (Asian) guy, and I give a weird look and the (young) (black) guy who’s in the passenger seat with his elbow hanging out the window as he sings gives a look at me and starts laughing because he sees that I see.

Then, they’re gone.

“That’s different,” I at that point say to the (older) (white) (skinny) guy standing next to me.

“Yeah,” he’s like, truthfully, and as he says that, I suddenly notice that he has barely any teeth.