varying degrees of light

While I was walking around this morning, a car pulled up right next to me. An old man was driving and wasted no time or pleasantries. "Direct me to the gymnasium." If it were a less beautiful morning, if I had less sleep in my bones, if he looked anything less like Walter Kronkite, I would have been a total jerk to him. "Direct me to the gymnasium," as if I were dressed in some shiny, rented vest and sharing weed with some talentless actor-hopeful outside while the rich and famous eat some overpriced, glitzy cuts of beef inside. If only he had known, of course, that I am a very big deal around these parts. The man smiled at me without smiling at me, before nodding imperceptibly and making his way with conviction. The next party I met, young pedestrians stood and hesitated before addressing me. I had my back to them, trying to focus on the top of a tree set upon a brilliant blue sky when I heard a mouse ask, "Um. Excuse me, sir?" I turned around to a frightened girl and two cowardly guys behind her. They all looked to be my age. "Sir," -- my goodness. The next was in the park, enjoying the hush of Iowa blanketed in January and allowing the sun to warm my face for a moment when a curly black dog came sniffing furiously. Her owner, a friend and a member of my parents' church (Faith CRC) came up with a smile and a camera of her own. She knew of me, had heard of me -- something about Dordt and so forth -- and I, her. The odd comfort was that, in our supposed familiarity but actual state of strangers, I found a calm security in her questions concerning all those big things: senior year, post-grad ambitions, Kenya. What we discussed wasn't advice as much as tangential themes and anecdotes. And after, she took a glove off so we could shake and I found myself placing my left hand over my right arm in doing so. She smirked in noticing this. I think I shrugged a little, apologizing.