. . . the people who you meet each day?

In the case of TheologyBaby, a child so city that she has trouble sleeping without the constant ambient din of sirens and hospital helicopters, the people she sees regularly are quite, um colorful.

Take, for instance, her friends from our daily walks.  We regularly stroll around a park (well, a T stop with some trees) near a river (well, a stagnant pool of black goo that alleges to be a river).  There are benches, occasional avant garde art work and, on a good day, ducks.  There are also several homeless people who frequent said benches; notable among them are Cliff and Leo.  Daily they smile and coo at TheoBaby; Cliff is a surprisingly competent tenor who sings her little ditties about how the man done kept him down.  Leo can juggle almost anything left in the trash can.  The kid loves it.  On one of our walks, Vera (a friend of Cliff and Leo’s) held court with the men and the three of them declared that TheoBaby is the most beautiful baby they see, and they see a lot of them during the day.  Though, they did say she deserved a better stroller.  (My neighborhood has a lot of “Bugaboos”.  I refuse to spend 1,000.00 on a conveyance device that a. I must push or b. carries someone who regularly gnaws on it.)

At the end of the “park” is a fenced in area I always thought belonged to the state, as it often had equipment for the upkeep of the wooded area.  And it has been brought to my attention that it does in fact belong to the state.  However, the nice men in orange jumpsuits who wield the equipment and keep my neighborhood spiffy and clean aren’t “employees” so much as convicted criminals paying their debts to society through landscaping when not in prison.  I learned this as TheoBaby and I were passing by and a nice young man hit a tennis ball outside of the fence with a splintered tree branch.  “Ma’am?” He called politely, “Could you toss us that?  I think we’d get in trouble if we tried to get it.” I threw it back thinking that those poor employees really should be able to do what they want with their lunch break.  And then I noticed the van parked nearby whose logo included the words “correctional facility.” Ah.  That would explain the orange jumpsuits, I suppose.  In any case, the baby waves and gets excited to see the park keeper-uppers, and they always call her beautiful and make leaf tornadoes with the leaf-blowers for her.  It’s a regular carnival over there.

Odd to note, though, was awhile back I noticed a few men, similarly attired to the park guys, standing at our intersection on the way home.  They had on orange vests and appeared for all the world to be collecting money in cans.  Again, this is not odd in the neighborhood per se.  But it is odd to see this particular group engaged in it.  With official outfits and matching orange cans.  I wondered if this was some sort of new strategy to beat prison budget cuts.  Or maybe it was another group altogether, whose fund raising efforts just favored the color orange.  I don’t know, though I think I will ask them if they ever come back. 

In the meantime, I wile away the hours ignoring the dissertation in creative parenting by making up little ditties on rainy days.  Sing along if you know the tune . . .

Oh, the incarcerated keep our parks clean
Even if the T riders are pretty mean,
They work, and work the whole day through
To make sure the paths are safe for you!

Cause a work-release inmate’s in your neighborhood
In your neighborhood, he’s in your neighborhood
A work-release inmate’s a person in your neighborhood
A person who you meet each day!