The Everyday People I See
The park my kid drags me to every evening is one place besides The Hanging Gardens of Babylon that is always buzzing with life; reptilian, avian, annelidan, or human. It never, never disappoints me when I’m looking for stories or just watching people.
I go to the park everyday, and I see the everyday-people there. The daily people. The plain Jacks and Janes. The people who are nondescript by description but who often land up in my notebook. Let me flip a few pages today and see who I find in there.
There is this one lady who asks me where I am from every week she meets me. I just give her a quick reply and she smiles back only to forget me the next week. I don’t mind. I don’t understand things that happen at her age. In fact, I’ve started to wait to see her again.
The tall elderly gentleman who drags a plastic moulded chair from one end of the sitting area to the other with a noise scarily loud enough to drive away the reptilian inhabitants of the park. And the human visitors too. I notice the reaction among the other people and I see distorted faces. Once he gets his chair placed at the exact latitudinal and longitudinal intersection he wants, he gives a smug look that only a slug that has finally reached its home can understand. Not we humans.
The guy who gets back from work at the same time every single day and walks past with his right hand stuck to his right ear. I almost started to believe that he was born that way, however, one evening his hand revealed a phone sandwiched between the palm and the ear and that reinforced my belief in the human anatomy.
Exactly at six I expect the arrival of a mom with three quacking babies behind her. They make a picture perfect for the tiny waterbody in the park, the mother duck followed by the fluffy yellow ducklings. I told her of this analogy one day and she smiled briefly. The next day the ducky train had a variation; the mommy duck followed the ducklings instead of the other way round.
There is a little boy who screams ‘I am not a robot’ everyday when he arrives at the park with his tiny blue bike. He is like the chugging train that signals its arrival from far; and just like eager passengers who get up to flock together the moment they hear an approaching train, this kid’s equally loud friends flock the entry to the park as soon as they hear the non-robot reclaiming himself to be a human.
The set of pet owners who match the look of their pets and come to the park for a walk. The Labrador owner with his clean shaven look and the Golden Retriever owner with his flowing locks grab attention when they walk together.
That’s it for today. I’m going to look for more people and more of their unremarkable actions tomorrow. But look who I found!
Spotty Mr.Gruberworth!
If you’ve liked the pet owner, or the guy with the hand stuck to his ear, or Mr.Gruberworth, clap for this piece.
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