15 SECOND GLIMPSE

                                                     by

                                             Patrick Breheny

     I was walking by, between the bus stop bench and the curb, when I first noticed him. He was three feet tall, so a dwarf. It was early evening, dark already, the bus stop unlit, and this is what I could see. His legs seemed shorter than any other part of his body, and he was wearing a baseball cap, on backwards. I couldn’t tell what team’s logo it had, but the cap told me something. It told me he hadn’t given up.

     Some bus drivers here, just some, do things they don’t do other places---caused by  the boredom of long routes and long hours? From a rumored propensity toward smoking meth? Just for sport? Whatever the impetus, they race each other, can and have crashed their busses, injuring passengers, pedestrians, vendors, destroying vendor’s stalls, utility poles and store windows. Another pastime they engage in is the Passenger Run, wherein they stop twenty yards before a bus stop and watch the passengers run for it. They seem to prefer handicaps, like an elderly woman lunging beside a middle aged guy using a cane. This time it was the small guy running behind an able bodied man.

     What I was afraid could happen at the driver’s whim for more entertainment, or  because he didn’t see him from his perch behind the steering wheel because only the rear door was open---a malfunction, deliberately, who knows?--- was that he would close the door with him half on and half off and drag him. Children have been killed, I want to believe unintentionally, by such misadventure, but nothing of that sort happened. He boarded the bus, and disappeared into its dimly lit interior.

     Running for the bus reinforced the impression given by the baseball cap. What would I do if I was three feet tall? I’d go through a process that I’m sure he has. There would be times when I would think it was too much, too unfair, too excluding, and consider opting out. But life is all we have for sure, so maybe not. Maybe just spend as much time as possible in bed. Yet have to get up sometime. Have to eat. Need a place to put that bed. Have to do something. Have to do.

     The backwards cap and the running spoke of spirit. He took the hand he’d been dealt and played it. I only saw him for fifteen seconds, a random glimpse, and he was on a public street. A more private uncensored peek could show something not quite as noble, but what might a spotlight shone without warning reveal of any of us? Something positive, we’d hope. Could you take it? Depends? Yet any glimpse, good or bad, would speak somehow of who we are, like an old snapshot with all the details not noticed at the time so prominent in the now/future. If Judgment Day is a 15 second clip, imagine the lobbying you’ll do with the angels to get the right one screened.

    Whatever team’s cap he was wearing, I’m sure if they knew they’d be rooting for him. If I ever see him again, I might summon enough of his flair to tell him he inspired me, though why would he care? He doesn't do it for me.  

    And it leaves me with this thought. We don’t always know when or how we affect  people. If you think you have no destined purpose, or your purpose is only what you’ve chosen for yourself--- don’t be so sure. Could be its not for you to know who you’re influencing, for better or worse. Just be yourself.

    A vacant mandate for sure. Who else could you be?

 copyright, 2016, with all rights reserved, by Patrick Breheny