My Thursday Brush With Death

Okay, that's a little dramatic. But still...
I love, love, love Kalamazoo.
I also love downtown Kalamazoo, but let's be honest and say that you will meet some of the sketchiest people alive there.
Today I met a man with a tracheotomy voice box, which in itself is not sketchy in any way, but I like to set the scene for you. This man is sketchy. If I tried to describe it to you, you wouldn't exactly get what I mean. Just trust me on this one.
It went like this:
Brady and I are going to the library (AWESOMEST library), and I get the stroller out of the trunk and put him in it, and lock the car, and stroll the stroller up onto the sidewalk. Just then, this man is walking by, so I say hello, and he says hello, and we chit chat, small talk.
Him: How's your day?
Me: Oh, good. Got my coffee. (Yeah, I'm like a genius of small talk, eh?)
Him: Well, that's all you need.
Me: Yeah.

So we walk up to the light on the corner and wait for it to turn red.
While we're waiting, my new friend, speaking to no one in particular, pushes the button on his voice box and says "God, please don't let the devil talk me out of doing what I know I have to do."

Okay.
Maybe I'm paranoid (yes), but does that not make you think that he's going to haul a gun out of his back pocket and kill you?
My immediate thought was the beginning of that book "I Know This Much Is True", where the guy is schizophrenic and saws his arm off in a library because he thought that God wanted him to.
Luckily, that didn't happen.
I was really happy to find out that that was apparently NOT what he knew he had to do.
Either that or the devil talked him out of it.
We crossed the street and I went into the library and he walked off down toward the outdoor mall. Probably what he knew he had to do was apply for a job, or finish "Ulysses", or recycle more often, and I am just a horrible, judgemental person.

P.S. Today, my Gambit-obsessed friend from the "Big Tree" coffee shop was wearing purple-tinted John Lennon glasses. It was difficult to carry on a conversation.