Wake and Bake

(Originally posted December 26, 2006)

Sometimes I sing along with Kermit [Ed Note: this was the name of my first iPod, which was green] in the morning. Just under my breath, more humming than singing, and the only person who I believe to ever have noticed is a woman down the street who never smiles anyway; so if it annoyed her I could care less. Anyway, chances are good that if you’re tooling about at 7 in the morning and you pass me, if I’m not listening to a book on tape then I might be mumbling and humming to myself.

The other morning, and this isn’t unusual, but Bridgett kind of tangled up the leash a little bit. I was juggling Bag o’ Poo, leash, and Cup o’ Coffee (which I now carry, even when empty, lest I lose another mug). Leash in my right hand, traveling over my front, to where the dog was sniffing something to the back and to my left. Humming/singing out loud – albeit softly – to myself, I raised my arm over my head to have the leash at my back instead of at my front. Since I was wondering what was taking her so long, I also turned around backwards to see if she was peeing, or just being a punk. Overall I imagine the move looked like some sort of dance move where you spin your partner around under your arm… only I was partner-less.

As I turned back around to my front, still singing, I realized that on the side porch of the house I was in front of, there were two people sitting, smoking, not five feet away from me. They were both giggling. What could I do? Wave. Smile. Keep walking.

Passing them, I got a whiff. Are those clove cigarettes? Because for a very brief time I dated a guy (if by “dating” you mean “friends with benefits”) who smoked cloves. And for a moment I wasn’t walking Bridgett. I was sitting with him on the front porch of the house I rented with another girl in the student ghetto, late in the evening, smelling his cloves and listening to Bob Marley drift from inside the house, singing that we should emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. Crickets are chirping, the heavy chains of the swing are creaking, we are young and we are unafraid and the world is ours.

Then I take another step, and get another whiff. It’s not cloves, it’s something else. I chuckle to myself, because we did an awful lot of that, too.

And I would have laughed my ass off if I had been waking and baking, and a woman walked by dancing with and singing to her dog.