People Are Strange

Photo Credit: J.Star

People are strange when you're a stranger ~ The Doors

The more I ride my bike in Penn Hills the more I think there is some kind of reality distortion field the encompasses me. Again I headed down to the local grocery store. I should be used to it by now. It started when I locked my bike up to the Handicapped sign.

“You can’t lock that up there.” said the guy bringing in the carts

“Excuse me.” I asked

“You can’t lock that up here.” He repeated. I had heard him the first time I just needed a moment to collect myself lest I decide to do something I regret. Like beat this man senseless with the u-lock in my hand.  I reached down and finished locking the bike to the sign, I took my helmet and attached it to the strap of my backpack and took a deep breath.

“tell you what, James (I read his nametag)  I’m going in. If you really have a problem tell the manager. I won’t be hard to find.” I turned my back and walked into the Store.

I saw the manager several times as I walked around. I nodded and he nodded back. Now on to summer repeats. Checking out I tell the girl ‘No bags please’ and proceeded to put my stuff in my Backpack.

“You ride your bike here?” she asked, noticing my Helmet.

“Yep” I said simply not offering any more. I packed up my groceries (minus my lunch) and headed out to my bike, unlocking it and walking over to the nice shady tree to sit and enjoy my lunch.  (Twinkies and Cherry 7up) While sitting under the tree I had two cars stop and ask me if I was ok.

Really

Some of you are thinking that it was good that people were asking me if I was OK. is it really? I wasn't trying to fix anything on my bike or even touching my bike. I wasn’t sprawled out trying to recover from some hill or asthma attack. I was sitting with my back against a tree eating a twinkie and drinking a bottle of pop. What about that other than I wasn’t in a car sounds so out of place that people had to stop and see if I was OK?

As I sat there I was reminded of a short story I read a long time ago. I had to get on the internet and look it up but I found that it was called "The Pedestrian" and was written by Ray Bradbury. You can watch the an animated version of it below.