Monday, February 10, 2014

Purple Lenses & Mr. Moo

CHIP OF WISDOM:

Proverbs 21, Verse 21

"The man who tries to be good, loving and kind finds life, righteousness, and honor."

---

CHIPPED WISDOM:

I don't remember when I first saw him-- maybe I was four or five.  He stood there, there on the corner of a busy intersection, dressed in brown slacks-- he looked like the kind of guy who'd call 'em "slacks", a plaid shirt, cardigan, and a tweed flat cap.  The hair that poked out front underneath that cap was gray and puffy-- what was left of it.  He wore a pair of glasses with purple tinted lenses.  When I was a little boy, I didn't know that old men wore purple eyeglass lenses to help them see when they had macular degeneration.  I just thought he was a cool, old black man who rocked out in purple sunglasses.  Because that was his thing.  

Anyway, when we were on our way to somewhere or other-- probably the mall (we were all mall-chicks back in the '80s, weren't we?) our Oldsmobile was stopped at the traffic light at that busy intersection, and that cool, old black man in his purple glasses looked straight at me, he smiled a toothy grin, and he waved.  It was a slow wave, palm extended, fingers spread apart a little bit, from side-to-side.  He had a stub of a cigar in between his first and second finger.  I waved back.

Maybe an hour-and-a-half later, we found ourselves approaching the intersection again.  But our light was green.

"Slow down, Daddy!  Slow down!" I yelled from blue velour bench seat in the back, "it's my friend!"

My father, easily confused but accustomed, from his Israeli army days, to taking orders, gently activated the Cutlass Ciera's drum brakes and the car rolled at a calmer pace and, as we passed old Purple Lenses, I waved frantically from the back seat.  And he reciprocated, a little less enthusiastically, but a wave is a wave.  
We only ever went by that intersection on weekends, but if he wasn't out there every single time we did, it seemed like he was.  

"Does he just stand out there all day, Mommy?" I asked my mother.

"He probably goes in at dinner time," she speculated.  She must be right, I thought; nobody can be that friendly to strangers on an empty stomach.  I wasn't so narcissistic even as a young child to think that I was the only one that Purple Lenses waved to, but I did refer to him as "my friend" and I very, very much did look forward to seeing him.  Not because I didn't have other people in my life who looked forward to seeing me, quite the contrary, but because he had no particular reason to be nice to me, or to like me, or to pick me.  He couldn't wave to thousands and thousands of motorists and their kin-- he had to pick and choose.  And I was one of the chosen ones.  Maybe he liked my Moe Howard haircut, which I faithfully maintained for far, far too long.  Maybe it was the black circles under my eyes from lack of sleep that told him I could use a friend.  

I don't know that I noticed his absence however many years later it was.  He wasn't out there all the time, and maybe I just expected, in the beginning, that he'd be there, you know-- next week.  Next week he'll be there, on the corner, lazily holding his cigar, smiling.  The Mayor of the Intersection.  The Ambassador of the Street Corner.  A few months went by and we took an autumn drive together as a family.  As we approached his corner-- it was his corner-- my mother turned around in her seat and she looked at me, reading my face as only a mother can.  She held her hand out between the seats and offered it to me.

"I think he must have died, Tutty," she said, using my favorite childhood nickname to soften the blow of the news I already knew.  

"Who died?" my oblivious father asked.  

It was hard to accept it when, a few more months later, a real estate sign would mark the lawn in front of his house like a headstone.  

I'll bet he was a good grandfather, I thought, and that was a comforting thought to someone who was a tad lacking in the grandfather department-- one being half-a-world away in Australia, and the other, though far more local, a bit... emotionally inaccessible.  

When I taught, I don't think I really understood when mothers of young boys would come up to me and tell me what it meant for their sons to have "a positive male role model."  In fact, it annoyed me a little bit, because it felt like they were congratulating me for having a penis and truculent facial hair.  But, looking back on my own growing up, I guess I get it.  My friend on the street corner taught me a lot about friendliness, and that it doesn't have to be just restricted to friends.  Mr. Moo, the elderly Asian man who ran the shoe shop on Haverford Avenue was always dressed in a shirt, tie, and vest, with shiny brown shoes and bright silver hair and I liked the way he looked and he always bent down to talk to me.  I didn't have to look up at him, but I looked up to him.  Maybe he's why I like to wear ties-- I don't know, I never really thought about it before, but I would ask my mother if we could go visit Mr. Moo on lazy afternoons when I didn't need any shoes.  And we would take the four minute drive down Haverford just to say hi.  

Sometimes I worry about myself, which keeps me busy and, you know, off drugs.  Well, the illegal ones.  I worry that men like Purple Lenses and Mr. Moo are disappearing and, if they're not, if they are still there, people aren't noticing them.  I don't know that we're noticing each other anymore.  I hate to sound like a fuddy-dud, but if we're sitting in the back seat, staring vacantly into bright screens, mindlessly scrolling our lives away, how will we ever look up to see that old black man in his tweed cap on the corner?

Look up, my loves.  And don't forget to wave.           

1 comment:

  1. I really enjoyed this post; it made me smile. Also, I learned about the purple lenses thing, which I did not know and really, again, as always with the fantastic visual descriptions.

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