out and about

~ Coming home from the grocery store, I saw a little boy plopped in a plastic chair on the sidewalk, apple in his hand, swinging tennis shoe feet that didn’t touch the ground. Yesterday was summer-hot in San Diego, but there he was, in the glaring bright sun. Next to him in another chair, was a small cardboard box propped on its side with an action figure leaning against one cardboard wall. A diorama of sorts. I wanted to see more of this little scene, but traffic started pushing through the light and I was forced to join in the fray. As I drove past, I could see some large crooked little-boy writing in the bottom of the box, the upstage wall, if you will. The action figure was placed carefully to the side of this writing, so I sensed it was some kind of ad, something meant to draw passersby to the little boy with his apple and his box and his action figure. Because it was Sunday and the Farmer’s Market swarmed nearby, there was no way to drive around again to see what, exactly, the little boy was doing on the sidewalk there. Maybe he was selling the action figure. Maybe he was engaging in some action figure street theater. I won’t ever know for sure. Whatever it was, I drove away smiling and rooting for the little boy and his box in the hot baking sun.

~ Several times a week, MB and I see them. Our neighborhood’s wandering elderly couple. They look like Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy and they are everywhere, all the time. We can be in the car, running a single errand, and see them more than once, such is the scope of their roaming. They wear khaki pants and white turtlenecks. Tennis shoes. Baseball caps. Her angel white hair sticks out from under her cap in a lump. This is their uniform, every time we see them. It makes me hot to look at them. I feel sweaty just thinking about them. Initially, we thought they had to be homeless because, literally, their clothing never changes. Her khaki pants are sort of graduated in color, grubbier and grubbier past the knee, as if she’s slogged through mud. He, on the other hand, seems quite neat, quite aware of the striking look of his tidy monochromatic attire.

After a couple of days of seeing them, we decided that they were working out. Power walking, I guess, based on the bend and movement in their arms. Or else perpetually late for the bus. Hume, I’ve noticed, always strides several paces ahead of Jessica, forcing her to trot and skip to catch up to him. He seems utterly focused on some imaginary journey in his head, obsessed with staying the course. Whatever this journey is, poor Jessica seems completely in the dark as she patters forever behind him. Just the rhythm of her steps seems to say wait for me wait for me wait for me. I’ve seen them so often I now have anxiety for her, for her balance, for her well-being. I watch her feet, hidden under the darkening khaki swell of her pants, move much faster than his and yet always always steps behind. He will never slow down and she will never catch up and I will have to accept that. Whenever I see them, I can hear that dreary Frau Schmidt from The Sound of Music drone inside my head, “The Von Trapp children don’t play. They march.” It feels a bit like that, like Hume is enforcing this eternal khaki march. I don’t know where they’re headed but, wherever it is, they are never there. I find myself wondering if they’re an old married couple. Or if they’re just friends. I wonder if he’s her personal geriatric trainer constantly pushing her harder and harder and harder. I wonder if she begs him to slow down and he simply can’t hear her. I wonder if he’s just a jerk. I wonder why his whites are so white and hers are so dingy. Some day, I’m afraid — because I occasionally have impulse control issues — I will roll the car window down and cry out from the depths of my well-intentioned buttinsky soul, “Slow down, Hume! You are marching poor Jessica to death! Slow DOWNNN, for the love of God!”