An Average Day

It’s been an average day. Average, average, average. I went to Walmart this morning and bought grub – including a pack of 6 hard-boiled eggs. I came home and put away the grub. I made deviled eggs from the hard-boiled eggs. I ate one of them. It was my breakfast.

I went to the ABC and bought a liter of brandy. I went to Martin’s and bought more grub. I came home and ate another deviled egg. I made broccoli slaw with ranch dressing.

I did a whole bunch of other totally average things. At about 5PM I ate dinner. Blackened filet of salmon (actually baked, but with blackened fish seasonings), asparagus sauteed in evoo, and steamed squash and onion. Yum.

At 7PM I call my cousin Ron. He’s the only relative I have left who still speaks to me. Am I that hard to get along with? Must be. At 7:10 I decide to take my evening walk. The air is about 85 degrees, and after the high 90s to low 100s we’ve had all summer the air feels good. On Lynchburg Avenue I pass two men talking across a chain link fence; the man on the sidewalk side of the fence has with him a Siberian Husky. I stop to talk to the men about the dog. The 6-month-old Husky is friendly and jumps on me to try to lick my face. I continue on my way past the middle school; the middle-schoolers are playing football behind the school this evening. Their impromptu athletic field is well below the roads around it, and as I pass by I look down on the field. Parents line the edge of the field, sitting in folding chairs watching their kids get exercise. I pass by parents sitting in parked cars and pickups watching events on the field below.

I go east for a couple of blocks then turn south. An elderly man sits in a rocking chair on a porch. “It’s a great day for sitting on the porch”, I say to him. “A lot better than a month ago”, he replies, smiling. I continue south on Cameron. As I cross Jackson Avenue, I see a man in a van having an argument with a woman standing beside the driver’s door. I don’t know what the argument is about; they argue in Spanish. Despite studying Spanish for two years in high school, I remember only enough now to say “no hablo Español”.

I turn onto Virginia Avenue and walk a short block to Violet Bank Museum. It was built around 1815 as a private residence. It replaced an earlier house that burned down in 1810. Its architecture is in the Federal style of the period. Violet Bank is locally famous for the massive and gnarly cucumber tree standing in front. I’ve never been inside the museum and I’m not going inside today.

I turn onto Arlington Avenue. It’s a short and pretty block. The street is divided into two lanes by a center median of grass and trees. A half minute later I arrive at the Boulevard. If I turn south I will begin a long downhill walk to the Appomatox River and a bridge across it that connects to Petersburg just a couple blocks from Old Towne.

Instead I turn north. About two blocks later I walk by the World War 2 Memorial Park. It’s kept in beautiful condition. A block further on, and the Boulevard bends and blends into an assemblage of auto shops, used car lots, tattoo parlours, hair stylists, gas stations, drugstores – a gritty smorgasbord of American roadside mediocrity. A young black woman jogs toward me with iPod earbuds plugged into her head. I figure she’s listening to music as she jogs, but as she passes I hear her utter a phrase in some foreign language, so I surmise she’s learning a new language as she jogs. Exercise for the body and the brain? Most likely, she’s a soldier stationed at nearby Fort Lee, preparing herself to go overseas.

I head for a drugstore entrance. I see a gal who waits tables at the local Applebee’s Bar and Grill. She’s talking to someone in a car, and though she sees me she gives no hint of recognizing me. Nor do I hint at recognizing her. Some kind of unwritten social convention seems to be at work, making each of us invisible. As I approach her I can tell she’s talking about a recent trip to Myrtle Beach. As I pass her and enter the store, I hear her say she was “bitten by a jellyfish”. I knew jellyfish can sting, but are they biting now? They have teeth now? Ouch.

I spend two minutes inside the store, basking in the air conditioning. Then - back outside. It’s getting dusky. Soon I’m back on Lynchburg Avenue and headed toward Lafayette. Ahead of me I see my neighbor Carey walking her two dogs (I have a blog entry about her dogs). She’s at the corner of Lafayette and Lynchburg. I wave and call her name. I hear her say something, but can’t tell what. I’ve lived two houses from her for seven years, and I’ve spoken with her in her front yard or over her backyard fence many times, and yet she’s never asked my name or given any indication she knows it. Of course, she’s only 37; I barely exist to people born after 1970. They consider me a part of the fossil record. “Say, shouldn’t you be in a museum?”

Give me time. I’ll be there soon enough.