The boy with the white-rimmed Geordi LaForge sunglasses was scaring me. He was wearing Indian moccasins, but not the fashionable kind — the oversized bedroom slipper kind, with blue scrubs for pants. He ambled, teetering dangerously on the edge of his own feet, with a slack jawed expression of vapid thoughtlessness. And the woman whom I took to be his mother had a vacant smile plastered across her face. Either that or her mouth was merely open as she squinted, her back to the sun, breathing laboriously behind broad Blu-Blockers of her own. I interpreted it as a smile, and so contorted my own face into one of abstract pleasantness. A non-comittally friendly exterior without an invite for further investigation or conversation. As soon as they passed, thankfully without asking for directions or even really acknowledging my presence, I allowed my visage to drop back into its form du-jour, sleep-deprived, expressionless and listless.

Back on my merry way I tromp, the path ahead clear of unwelcome passersby. Another day in the life of….