A Simple Hello Will Do

There's a homeless guy in my neighborhood who I see almost every day. He's got mussy blonde hair, a wide and browned face with big blue eyes, and is of some undeterminable age between 20 and 40. Some days he's simply hanging out on the sidewalk, or sitting at the coffee shop, sometimes chatting with other homeless folk or just minding his own business.

Other days, he's off his rocker, railing at passing cars and passersby, sometimes more or less intelligbly, but mostly it's an angry stream of insults that make people freeze in their tracks for a split-second before moving on and pretending they can't hear the racket. Today he was like that, screaming down Market Street, and everyone who saw him became a target of his rambling rants. (I, for example, was called a ho-ho-whore.)

There was one day, a few months ago, when he was lying on a stack of newspapers on the sidewalk, just soaking up sunshine quietly, seemingly at total peace, and I walked past. He looked up at me and we made eye contact, and I smiled at him, said hello, then kept walking. Behind me, I heard him say, "Thank you. You just completely made my day."