Birmingham. A public park. It was sunny. I was walking my bloodhound, Thelma Lou, trying to get her to do her business. I wore a blue plastic poop-baggy over my hand. Ready for action.
The park was alive with people. People of all kinds. From all walks.
I passed a priest. The padre was elderly, with dandelion-fuzz hair. He walked on the paved track alongside a young man whose hair was in cornrows, whose skin was painted in tattoos. They were having a discussion about something evidently important.
At one point I think the boy was crying. Whereupon the priest put his arm around the young man and they hug-walked in silence.
I also passed a middle-aged man with freckles, sitting on a blanket with his beautiful Asian wife. They were having a fancy picnic, complete with champagne. My dog nosed around their plates and we were instantly introduced. We talked.
“Today is our 30th anniversary,” said the woman. “We met when we were in the Air Force, overseas, in Germany.”
I asked them
to say something in German.
“Ich liebe dich,” they said to each other. Then they kissed.
I asked what this phrase meant. The woman just smiled at me and said, “Look it up.”
I practiced this phrase several times, committing it to memory, using a faux German accent. But, much to their amusement, I sounded like a prodigious idiot.
Meanwhile, in the distance, I saw a busload of young Black girls filtering into the park. They were maybe 8 or 9 years old. There must have been a hundred of them.
They were running on the track, jogging in various directions, hollering, laughing, doing cartwheels. Some wore school uniforms. Many had beads in their hair.
Several girls were playing elaborate hand-clap games at breakneck tempos, shouting in loud rhymes.
“Double double this, this! Double double that, that…!”
A few of the girls were interested in my…