I woke up this morning to my usual routine, amidst outskirt weather patterns from a hurricane, flood warnings, it was stormy and I did my morning tasks, which included taking out the trash, walking through the rainy alleyway, on my way to get a cup of coffee a few blocks away.
Almost far enough away to ignore, I heard the beckoning call of an older gentleman asking for help, ‘hey man, can you help me… Could you be a good samaritan?’
I looked over to a dark green pickup truck, filled with metal scrap, which was the direction I was heading anyway, and shrugged a friendly mannerism, accepting the invitation to help the old guy out.
I get closer to the truck, outside a neighbor’s apartment, my body language asking how I can help, and the dude gestures towards a safe. A medium sized portable safe with wheels, tipped over on it’s side, 4 feet from the blueish white smoke pouring out of freighted shitbox pick-up truck’s exhaust. I knew right then it wasn’t a simple favor, and it wasn’t his safe, so I told him- ‘I’m not helping you fucking lift that shit…’ and kept walking towards the coffee shop. It took me two or three steps to realize how snarky my reaction was…
The friendly patron of the alley way soon turned into a towering menace ghoul, somewhere in-between Fred Sanford and a taller, meaner Bill Duke, throwing pieces of metal and shouting at me as I kept stride right past the scene of a scrapper’s pending crime spree… ‘All Right THEN MOTHERFUCKER, Don’t help an old man out…’
I passed by on my way home, no more truck full of recyclables, just a wet sentry safe and some picked through debris, happy I avoided being an unwitting accomplice to a heist on my way to get coffee…
