When I poked him, this is how I was carrying my shitty single-use plastic cup, previously filled with ice, decaffeinated coffee, and cream. I walk pretty fast, even though I never really have anywhere to be. I also swing my arms (not a lot like a monkey, but) just a little forward and back to my side. Definitely, I don’t swing my arms from side to side.

There were two people coming towards us, while he was ahead of me, to my slight right. As soon as I was passing them shoulder to shoulder, I moved a little forward to pass his metaphorically slow ass. Which is when I poked him JUST SO with my straw, in his literal human ass.

He jumped a little, but moved forward and to the right a lot. I froze with my magic wand straw in hand, as guilty as a kid next to the cookie jar. I was poised with feet apart, and my body a little forward, while he too was frozen, but leaning back and staring at my hand. I started with “I AM SO SORRY I DIDN’T MEAN TO POKE YOU IN YOUR BOTTOM I AM SO SORRY I POKED YOUR BUM AREA ARE YOU OKAY?”

He didn’t answer for what felt like a lifetime, both of us standing staring at one another, both of us in shock. I imagine that this is what the O.K. Corral felt like, only with bullets in place of straws. And, I don’t know how many people got shot in the ass.

He started straightening, broke into a smile, and said You could have at least bought me a drink first.

Today, I am grateful for:
1. Not being killed by a rollator. (When I looked over my shoulder at the elderly woman who kept plowing her rollator into my ankles, she was smiling kindly. Sadist, I can’t wait to get this old and start doing shit like this to people too.)
2. Having quickly registered that the black chair on which I was lowering my own ass wasn’t, in fact, a chair. It was a shoe-rack and thank you legs for holding me together when I started to relax into “the chair”, but the shoe-rack gave way.
3. Strong shoe-racks that though they give way, still hold it together as soon as you stop trying to sit on them.

Ottawa | Day 225 | July 13, 2019

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