5 is a good round number

1. Walking home from the bus stop, I pass by this building that is being constructed. I have seen it change from a dirt lot into a 5 story wooden skeleton of a building. There is scaffolding on the sidewalk for the block down Vermont where this building is being hammered, nailed, breathed into existence. On this scaffolding there are billboards signs. The kind where there are about 10 of each kind, smothered with glue and every week it changes. Beyonce, Vans Shoes, Ludacris, Snakes on Planes, and Jessica Simpson have been among the ones prostituting themselves on the street. It makes me laugh, a good belly laugh, when I walk by and Jessica Simpson has been given a unibrow, a mustache and warts all over her face. It reminds me that children are just children, even in South Central.

2. A black woman on the bus, who is familiar to me, as I often ride the bus, and I think she is a homeless woman who panhandles near my office. She is coherent, aware that her bags are taking up the center aisle, and tries to move them closer to herself when passengers need to walk by. Suddenly, as if the bus was her living room, and we were all her guests, she starts speaking animatedly about white stuff oozing out her skin, having snakes and worms inside her body, and how Michael Jackson told her we were all going to die. Then she says, “I can’t wait to go to the doctor, and let him take care of all this.”

A few people nod at her. One woman smiles at me like, “Dude, this woman is crazy.” I do not acknowledge that grin, and instead close my eyes and pray. The truth of statement about the doctor rings in my ears: yes, Jesus is the doctor and we just need to go to him with trust.

Out of her bag she pulls a Fedex ® Envelope which she is reusing as a bag, and from there pulls out a magazine. She has all the mannerisms of waiting in a doctor’s office, paging through a magazine, primping her hair, looking at the time. She comes to a picture of a small town, “Look here,” she is speaking to us again, “a picture of old times. I look at this and it makes me want to be there, like back in Arkansas. I’m from Arkansas you know?” She seems to be directing these comments specifically to another black woman two seats to the left. And that woman responds emotionlessly, “The old days are gone.” The homeless woman continues, “Seeing this makes me want to be two places at once. All this...maybe just there in the summer time and here in the winter. Traveling, you know.” She motions out the window, towards the downtown buildings.

She confuses me. She is sensible, yet she has to be crazy. I wonder how she got to be here: on this bus, talking to strangers about the snakes inside of her, waiting for the doctor healing touch.

3. A tip for the Disney Generation: Have you ever been in an orchard, picking apples, singing, “I’m wishing for the one I love To find me today, I'm hoping and I'm dreaming of the nice things he'll say,” (emphasis added). And then when he comes riding on horseback, (as most Prince Charmings do), you run away, dropping all the apples you just picked. Well, if it hasn’t happened to you, it has happened to someone we all know and love: Maybe Snow White should change her Lyrics, “I’m working on my character and hoping that when my love and I find each other, we will be ready for a relationship.” Too bad that doesn’t rhyme.

4. Have you noticed that noses are protrusion in the middle of your face and there is just no way to hide these noticeable noses? Only the thing is that we hardly ever do notice. I guess because everyone has one. But when you do notice, then you can’t stop noticing. Go out and look at some noses today. Did you know they come in all shapes and sizes? Much like vegetarians...

5. 9am meeting: At 8:45 the meeting reminder pops up on all the admins computers (Oh, the miracle of Outlook). We all guess that we don’t have a meeting (since we just had a special once a quarter office wide meeting earlier this week), but still someone asks, “Do we have a meeting?” “Yes, I heard Les say we were still meeting.” Hmm okay, at 8:59, I grab a pen, a piece a paper and head towards the conference room. We all look around, Les is sitting there. There is the usually pre-meeting banter (“I’d be a 1,000 times better right now if I had a donut in my hand” exclaims Davey his unique accent her attributes to prostitutes in the 1930s). At 9:03 Les looks around in that I-am-starting-the-meeting-now-look and so we all quiet down and look in her direction. She stands and says, “Well, yes, I think everyone is here, and this is how meetings will start on time. There is only one announcement at today’s meeting and that is that there is NO meeting.” She smiles and we look at each other in bewilderment, wondering why she didn’t email us, or leave us voicemails, or that handy-old-fashion word-of-month style, and leave.

I have a sinking feeling it was some kind of test and the worse thing is I think I passed...