Lucky Me

     The sun beat down from high above baking the concrete and my hunched back. I watched as my sneakers kicked up a small puff of dust each time my foot made contact with the warm surface. My brain was clicking along at a slower pace than usual. It was summer after all. Thoughts didn't have to come and go rapidly.

    I was thinking about how good the lemonade would taste at home when the air, ever so slightly, thickened in front of me. I froze. I slowly lifted my head and retreated a pace while I scanned my surroundings.

     There was nothing. Not a single living thing moved in my field of vision. I looked to my right at the trees across the street there wasn’t even see a bird roosting there. A reluctant breeze stirred the under-watered, overcooked grasses of the empty lot to my left but still, nothing. I sighed. Something would happen, it always did.  I sullenly made my way up the gentle slope leading to the undeveloped plot of suburbia and plopped myself down on the ground to wait. I had time to wait.

     The hardest part about the "thick places" was I never knew if it was really important. I plucked at a withered blade of grass and shivered as I remembered the little girl I grabbed before a guy on a motorcycle ran her down lat summer.  The 3-year-old had escaped 2 adults, one teen and a dog to dash 50 yards towards the street. The motorcycle had been cut off by a car changing lanes and had swerved near the sidewalk at the exact instant the little girl reached the curb. 

     Mostly though, it was stupid stuff. I had been with my mother a few years ago and had felt the tingle of the air coalescing. Since we were in a grocery store parking lot, I slowed my pace on the way to the car to see if I needed to intervene. 

     My mother had long ago resigned herself to the fact that her son had a remarkable knack for being in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. I had never told her how I knew where those places were going to pop up. It seemed like it might keep her up at night. It kept me up at night and one tired Randall seemed enough in a household. 

     I was looking for cars, rocket propelled grenades when, Bam! It happened. Two old ladies ran right into each other. Hairpins and pocketbooks went flying. In the chaos of righting themselves, apologizing and gathering their things they came to an amazing realization. They had been classmates, in Kindergarten, in Maine.  What an amazing coincidence! What were the odds of that happening they wondered aloud? People seem to wonder that all the time when I am around.