Chapter 2: Wanderers, Condoms and The Smile Amongst the Frowns
As usual, Quincy was running late for school and he decided that sharing his cereal with a mouse would surely earn him a better seat in heaven, so he placed the recently vacated cereal box in the garbage can and set another trap in hopes of hand delivering the other mouse to this special treat. He quickly pulled his shoes on, threw on a hat, and was out the door. Once outside his apartment door, he turned and locked both of his two deadbolts. Then he followed up the process by attempting to open the locked door. This whole ordeal was simply a measure to ensure that wandering people, as his mother called them, might not stumble into his place believing it was their own and then once they realized that it was not their home, they would remove their belongings and take them to their actual home. Only later would the wanderer realize that the contents were not theirs as well. Quincy wondered why these people did not return the items once this realization had occurred. He assumed that maybe the wanderers had some mental illness, and were too embarrassed to admit it thus making returning the borrowed goods too hard.
As Quincy got half way down the three flights of stairs he walked everyday on his way to school, he could not remember if he had locked the door. At first he did the hand test. He looked at his hand and tried to see if he could feel the remnants of the sensation of trying to open the locked door, but felt unconfident about the results. So, he followed this test with the mental reenactment test. In his mind he tried to picture his hand going through the motion of locking the door. He was able to do this, but could not determine if the door locking he saw in his mind was of today’s alleged locking or a previous attempt. Thus he concluded that he did not have sufficient data to conclude that his door was locked. The final ritual was to try and convince himself that even if the door was unlocked, this was unlikely to be discovered by anyone but him upon his return. Yet, knowing that wanderers were not uncommon in the city of Philadelphia, he hurried back up the stairs only to find that the door was in fact locked. But just to be sure, he unlocked the door, and then relocked it extra carefully. At this point he was a little out of breath from rushing back up the stairs, and wished he would have made the first locking of the door a more memorable experience. As he reached the bottom of the stairs, he succeeded in testing the hand and mind test. He approached the world outside confident he had locked the door only to realize he had forgotten his school bag.
Finally he reached the first of two security doors into his apartment. These were obviously there to prevent someone from leaving the apartment too quickly. Likely a device placed there by the landlords to ensure that tenants had a chance to reflect on whether they had forgotten anything on their way out. Quincy had already retrieved his bag, so he was all set to leave. The first door had a magical button that once pushed allowed the door to be opened. Yet, many a time, in the short time he had lived with his father, Quincy had attempted to just rush through the door only to find that it would not budge without the required push of the button. And one should never underestimate the momentum of a boy late to school against the unsavory feeling of smashing into metal and glass.
The next door was the tried and true two-faced knob. From the inside the knob put on the ‘exit-at-your-pleasure’ guise. On the outside, it displayed quite the opposite. The door had a keyhole with plenty of attitude. Sure it seemed simple enough. Place the key inside and turn, but lord knows that would be too easy for criminals trying to get in. So along with the key, one had to master a hand gesture that would catch the lock just right and cause the door to unlock. The reasoning behind this was surely taking into consideration the fact that a thief might steal a tenant’s key but then would be completely discouraged by the skill required to unlock the door.
Once outside, Quincy saw the same face he saw every morning. It was the lady who was always sitting on the stairway waiting for someone, or so it appeared. In fact, she was almost always there waiting. Her manly appearance, short and disheveled black hair, and prominent wart in the middle of her chin (with a hairdo of its own, though slightly more 'sheveled') nearly qualified her as a city landmark. She would always wish Quincy a good day and then start into a conversation. She was quite the conversationalist despite most of her words being entirely unintelligible. In fact, she could start a conversation with Quincy and continue it for hours, though Quincy only remained present for the first thirty seconds of the conversation. Sometime Quincy would return home hours later to catch the tail end of the same conversation. He was sure she was discussing something quite brilliant and at times he wished he spoke her weird form of English. Some days, another lady would be at the bottom of the stairs. Her crossed gray eyes, and stringy white hair made her the perfect compliment to the landmark. But unlike the landmark she was not much for talking to other people. Instead, she preferred to talk to herself. She probably figured that she shared quite a many interests with herself. Thus, he always knew where to go when he desired to view a conversation.
The next person that Quincy encountered was not directly in his path but rather three floors up. Staring down from his balcony, a large man with thick glasses whose name was unknown to Quincy shouted down ‘have a good day.’ He yelled this everyday. Further, he was not one to let his ‘have a good day’ go unnoticed. Thus, if Quincy did not acknowledge him, then he would shout louder. Never straying from the beaten path, this man repeated verbatim his beloved quote, ‘have a good day’. He was not one for mixing things up. Never would he venture to a ‘have a great day’ or ‘have a splendid afternoon’. No, ‘have a good day’ had served him well in his life, and he would not betray the trust the two had for each other. Once Quincy took note of his morning greeting and shouted back his prepackaged response ‘you too’, he continued along his way to the subway.
The sidewalk bared a wide assortment of eye candies to share with the walker. Quincy saw dog excrement in shapes that baffled the mind. He felt sure that the owners of the dogs had left the poo with the best of intentions, possibly in order to fertilize the weeds growing through the cement cracks. Yet, Quincy accidentally corrupted these intentions by applying the excrement to the bottom of his shoe. Now, this was no stale piece that had long since parted ways with its glory days and lost its emanating effect. Rather, he had acquired a slice that boldly and proudly announced to the world that it was freshly squeezed. After making his best effort to return the fertilizer to the sidewalk, Quincy continued on. From time to time he would stop to check and see if random odors approaching his nose were coming from his shoe. He could never quite confirm if the shoe still smelled but worrying about it would haunt him for the rest of the day.
Also on the sidewalk were shards of glass presented in every assortment of shape, and in multitudes of color. They must have been left as part of a program to promote better quality of soles on shoes. He hoped none would get stuck to the remnants of poo on his footwear.
As he continued on, Quincy found himself walking behind a mother and her two children. One child was a three year old girl with adorable braids in her hair and the other child was a five year old boy who strutted as if he knew the local gangs where watching out for new recruits. They were all eating bags of chips. Quincy wondered if they were some newly introduced breakfast chips. Suddenly, all three finished their bags of chips and in unison dropped the bags on to the sidewalk. To see such unison amongst this family warmed Quincy’s heart and he wished that he had a camera. He had seen dozens of people dropping similar items onto the road but never with such skill. Quincy had long regretted that his parents had never taught him the art of littering. He had reached that point in his life when he could not break the bad habit of using a trashcan despite the clear evidence that the litter would make it to the trashcan by itself, thus relieving one from wasting the extra energy of finding a trashcan. The proof was in the fact that the next day he would walk by the same location that the chip bags were dropped and the bags would no longer be there. Sometimes there would be three bags that were slightly more spread out and in varying locations. Clearly these were new chip bags, as chips bags could not simply get up and move themselves. But usually the drop off point of the litter would be devoid of anything resembling the decorations left the previous day, and instead new items of garbage would have taken their place.
Before reaching the subway, Quincy encountered another familiar friend. On the sidewalk was a condom. Sometimes the condoms were unused. Obviously, this was the city of Philadelphia’s way of promoting safe sex. Anytime you need a condom, you know you can run outside and find one already open. Though, sometimes the condom has already been used and returned. This may be because some people believe that condoms can be recycled, or it may be a little thank you from those who have benefited from the ‘Sidewalk for Safer Sex Program’ as Quincy termed it. Though, sadly it is apparent that not a whole lot of sex goes on in Philadelphia, as many of the condoms remain on the sidewalks for weeks at a time, and in fact many new ones appear before the old ones are taken. Clearly someone should inform who ever was in charge of condom deployment that they should slow down the supply.
Finally Quincy had reached 46th and Market. He walked up the flight of stairs and walked over to the gates that one must pass before going to the boarding dock. Quickly he dug through his pocket to find a token. First he pulled out a quarter, which out of amusement he checked to see which state was on the back of it. Then he replaced it in his pocket and searched around some more. Again he pulled out a quarter and much to his amusement, it was the same quarter. This process repeated itself a few more times until finally Quincy placed the quarter in his other pocket. Once he completed this task, he realized that his other pocket was where he had put his token and so he reached into the pocket and grabbed. Sure enough, he grabbed the same quarter. Finally he managed to locate the token and dropped it in the machine and charged forward to the spinning devices that would have granted entrance if only he had waited for his token to register in the machine. Instead he received a sharp pain in his crotch and he proceeded with caution.
Once he arrived at the boarding platform he noticed that there were many people waiting to catch the subway train. As usual, everyone was frowning. This was part of an unspoken code that existed amongst riders of the subway. In fact, it was sort of a game, and one expected that if they smiled the smile police might show up and inform you that you had lost your right to ride the subway that day. So, everyone kept a frown visible at all times. Quincy often found himself searching all the faces around him to find a smile. But, the people riding the subway were no group of amateurs. One would think smiles had been place on the extinction list if they lived in the subway. In fact, Quincy thought about asking some of the people who camped out on the benches in the subway if such were the case. But then it happened. Quincy looked down and saw a young child with a smile on his face. Not knowing what to do, Quincy tried to look away in hopes that he could simply forget that he saw the violation. Yet, he felt it his duty as a good samaritan to report the child to the authorities, but quickly convinced himself that the child’s young age allowed an exception to be made. Still, he could not help but hold the parents of the child responsible. Though he was unsure who the parents were as the child seemed to be quite alone. But in a city like Philadelphia, what could possibly happen to an unwatched child?
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