On Sunday, I talked to an older black man going through the recyclables in the garbage cans in the alley. He told a tale of going through another set of garbage cans in another alley, when a woman came out to recover $3,700 she had inadvertently thrown away in the garbage. "Can you believe it? What a cheap skate! She only gave me $2!" he said. We commiserated about the fecklessness of women who don't just hand away money. Then my friendliness began to worry him. "People don't just become friends on the street - it don't work that way," he said suspiciously. He then headed down the alley.
Later in the afternoon, a Spanish-speaking fellow with some sort of mental challenge was going through the recyclables. He got agitated because there was a loose dog by the garbage cans. Someone had left the front gate to her yard open and Addison, the dog from next door, had escaped and come around to the back gate trying to get back into the yard. "Ella vive aqui," I reassured the man, as I climbed precariously atop a broken piece of furniture in the alley to open the back gate for the dog. The man then headed down the alley.
Sunday evening, I was trying to open the lock on my back gate when someone down the alley began yelling, "Hey! Hey!" I quickly entered my yard and locked the gate behind me, hoping to avoid detection, but I had been spotted. The man continued yelling, "Get a camera! You're going to see something you've never seen before! I've got fireworks! It's going to be AWESOME! Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy BIRTHDAY to me, happy birthday to me!" I retreated indoors and refused to look as the man set off a small display of fireworks by my back hedge, mostly for my enjoyment I guess, before he too headed down the alley.
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