Interaction in the city.

Sometimes interaction with strangers in a city can be a strange thing. Three cases to point out:

I live across from a school and have to navigate schoolkids on my way to work. This morning, I glanced up and a young, attractive dad with his 8-year-old daughter in tow. I was not ogling the man, and really only looked at him for a split second, but the little girl narrowed her eyes and gave me the look of the devil. Maybe she is used to young women liking her dad? Either way, such cruelty from a young'un.

In a more uncomfortable moment, I was on the bus the other night with three other people. A too-talkative, mid-forties lady, who has nothing to do with this story; a 30-something black man; and a 60-year-old, horn-rimmed glasses white guy. The bus stops in the middle of the road. We can't get through due to a very fancy car parked pretty much in the middle of the street, in a no-parking zone. Bus driver gets off the bus to locate car owner. Temper on bus is rising. Car owner returns to move his car. He happens to be a young black man. 60-year-old horn-rimmed glasses turns to me and the other guy in the bus and says, trying to be so cool and with-it, "Just one of the brothers, doing his thang." My polite, pasted on smile switched quickly into a dropped jaw and widened eyes. Um, are you kidding me? He got off the bus at that point, no doubt satisfied by the fact that he appeared so "tolerant" and "hip." When really, he was a dowdy professor dude about to get punched.

Last weird thing: walking home yesterday, I hear a guy say to a girl, "I love you!" as they parted ways. Next block, he says to me, I kid you not, "What's a cute girl like you doing walking by yourself?" When I called him out on the "I love you," he very quickly--too quickly-- dismissed me "oh, she's my sister." Then he asked, in rapid succession, if I like Old City, if I like crowds, if I have a roommate, a boyfriend, if I own my apartment, if I like my friend Z's fiancee that she is marrying this weekend (which I do), how long they have been dating, how old she was, where I went to college, was I a lawyer... and the list goes on.

That's it and that's all. Call me boring if you want. But don't call me late for dinner.