DOG DAZE AFTERNOON

Before we baked muffins Monday night, K. and I encountered what appeared to be a homeless man pushing a shopping cart up Avenue U. After he passed us (we were going opposite ways), he turned around and said,

"HEY! ARE YOU JESSICA?"

K. and I both turned around, and saw him looking at us. I indicated myself, and said, "Who, me?" The man nodded, before repeating,

"ARE YOU JESSICA?"

"No, my name is not Jessica," I said.

"NO! HER!" the man said, pointing to K.

K. said, "No!"

The man said, "Okay," and we continued our respective ways.

The thing is, while we had been "conversing," I noticed there was a dog underneath some blankets in the homeless-looking guy’s shopping cart. It was a cute dog, the same kind I grew up with back in Miami. A full-size Pomeranian, with fox-like face and thick coat of orange-brown fur! It snuck its sniffing snout up from underneath the blankets, and I thought, "Man, I would love to buy that dog from this homeless guy, but it would probably deprive him of his sole means of companionship." So I didn’t.

But I did turn around and give him a dollar. I told him to buy the dog something to eat, and to get himself something, too, if needs be. He might have thanked me, but I was too busy admiring his dog to notice. It seemed very comfortable in the shopping cart. I would have named it Yoshimi, or Walter.

That homeless man better take good care of Yoshimi (Or Walter), and not spend my whole dollar on booze.