The Mysterious Hollering Dude Returns

From December of 2013.  Because in the trenches of a Minnesota August, I'm romanticizing how wonderful an arctic breeze can feel.


It is 45 minutes until the sun will be up.  I have managed to squeeze into every article of clothing that I own and waddle myself, fat as a tick, down the street and toward the bus stop.  It is cold out, the kind of cold that will make the forecast of zero later in the week seem positively spring-like.  Standing at the corner, waiting for the traffic to pass, I blink several times in an effort to clear what I suspect may be a thin layer of ice from my eyeballs.
It has been quite some time since I’ve seen him, and holy moley, there he is.
“Mornin’!”, he says.
I step to one side while Mike – was his name Mike? – zips by on a bicycle.
“Morning!” I call.
I haven’t seen him in well over a year. 
Honestly, it’s just not that kind of relationship.
I live in a city and, like anywhere else, there are routines.  I may not know you, but I know that you go to Starbucks.  I know that you get off the bus four stops before me.  I know that you have a dog and should hit that black wool coat of yours with one of those sticky-tape rolls…  But I don’t know where you go when I don’t see you.  And sometimes, that bothers me.  These people we see every day but don’t really know, do they feel the same way about us? 
I will board the bus shortly.  I will see the man with the sculpted facial hair, the one whose clothes smell like cigarette smoke.  I will see the older woman with the impeccable lipstick and the strikingly beautiful white hair.  I will see the man in inadequate winter gear, the man with the profile of Aztec royalty. 
Am I the woman in the sleeping-bag coat, the blonde with the iPod earbud in one ear?
And I turn to watch Mike – and his bicycle – already a block away, his tail light blinking redly into the distance.