Begging Dave's Pardon

A few years back, I made a pilgrimage from Washington State to my original home, Maryland, in the comfort and dignity promised by a well known bus company.

One night at 1 a.m., I stood on a street in Minneapolis, tired of confinement and disobeying the advice given to women everywhere. I headed toward some rock music on an orderly street populated mostly by men also seeking the music, and a single cop focusing on some paperwork in his cruiser. I saw no one obviously dealing drugs or laying out plans of mayhem.

But soon, I saw Dave. Dressed in a raincoat, Dave offered me a scroll. He would fill his raincoat, indeed several, and his scroll, indeed many, if all went according to intention. When they were full of writing, he would offer them to a museum.

Dave didn't hit on me, a lone woman out and about. Homeless, he didn't beg for money. Alone, he didn't invoke the kinship of our color. He did not give me any story except his plan to fill his scrolls and his raincoats with signatures of passersby.

I felt connected and thrilled when he invited me to autograph a scroll. Carefully, I lettered "Good luck" and my name.

Good.

Luck.

Good luck?

My trip was long over when it sank in that by memorializing visitors to this street in his town, this man of so few means had created a way of offering me – and all who encountered him - a sense of immortality. Immortality!

How many strangers had acknowledged this important gift with unwitting condescension, as I had?

How I wish I had written then what I am thinking now:

Thank you, Dave. Thank you and thank you and thank you. Making your brief acquaintance was one of the high points of my hajj.