He’s only about 5 feet tall and skinny, very skinny. I
can’t guess his age. He could be in his fifties or sixties, worn out. He has
dark complexion and oily countenance, not handsome definitely. His eyes are a
bit too narrow. My guess is that he used to be a pretty funny guy when he was
younger. At least that’s how he always looks now. But of course I can’t tell
precisely. Many mad people seem to be smile or laugh a lot without reason. In
fact, that is the early sign of madness that the grown-ups told us when we, the
kids saw crazy people on the street: laughing alone. Anyhow, when he smiles or
laughs, exposing his dark teeth, -tobacco stained teeth or worms infected
teeth, it seems like he has dimples, which makes him look friendly and funny. I
guess there aren’t so many teeth left anyway, you can tell from his hollow
cheeks.
Every time I pass the street on the
way out from the residential complex where I stay these last two years, this
man always sits on the narrow bridge that connects the complex and the small
street to the main road, -which is separated by a narrow creek. There are still
some big old trees around that small paradise. Coconut trees, hairy fruits
trees, jamboo trees and some others in that small garden of
the residential complex. The trees create enough shades for him to be desolated
there all the time.
He always wears that dirty rugged
cowboy hat. His shirt looks like it has never been washed with water and
detergent for way too long. The color must have been white before, or broken
white, now it’s brownish. The pants are black, or what supposed to be black
before but now full with splashed of dirt and mud. Definitely he’s never taken
a bath nor shaved his white beard and mustache.
I can’t really recall when exactly
I started to smile and wave my hand to say hi at him every time I walk passed
him sitting on the bridge like a bird perching on a tree branch: folding his
legs, wrapping his knees with his hands, slowly swaying his body back and forth
and humming some kind of rhythms I’ve never got a clue, and then smiling, or
more often, laughing alone.
I think it started when I was
walking and thinking what I would say to the bus drivers mob who usually sit on
the same bridge playing cards or gambling and saying hi mockingly to the
passers by. This mad man I counted as one of them, because he was sometimes
joining the scoundrels. But the more I observed, the more I found out that he’s
different, he’s not sane. The way he laughed, chuckled and sometimes waved and
said, “Hey miss, good morning eh?”, and chuckled and laughed again,
which made me think there was something not really right there.
So my instinct told me to avoid
trouble (yes, you will never predict when he will run or jump and chase you,
this I knew well since my childhood when our biggest fear was mad people on the
street: health care for the poor
who are mentally ill in this country is really bad, if the family abandons
them, they become homeless and live from others' pity). Avoiding trouble could
be by running and escaping from it, or facing it with cool mind. I chose the
latter. I smiled to him, I said hi too to him, I waved my hand to him and said
loudly “Good morning Sir!”
And that keeps happening until
recently. To me there is no harm in doing that. Who knows, like the wise men
say: maybe he’s one of the undercover angels? The homeless, the beggars, and
the poor whom people always shrugged their shoulder off them, or avoid eye
contact with them (I do this too many times, yes I am not a saint, sadly). I
will never know. One thing I know is, if the scripture says “Do to others
what you want others to do to you”, then this is what I do, that I want
others to do to me. Even when I am insane, I still think it might be good if
others are keep smiling at me, or saying hi to me, or asking me how I am doing
lately. At least, that would make me feel like a person with dignity of a human
being, who might just lose her the sanity for some reasons.
