Saddest Thing I've Ever Seen

While driving down Plainville Road the other day, I spied an old man, slowly walking in the mid-day sun. The waning, muddled mass of hair on his head matched the white of the three days' stubble on his cheeks, his chin, his lip, all lightly glowing with sweat. The ragged, worn, beige button-down shirt and dusty, cuff-dragged, dark brown pants were draped on his emaciated frame, much like his thin, tired skin.

He moved up the sidewalk with unsteady ease, a look of vacant pain filling his face, which had been frightfully numbed by the miles and years spread out like so many disappointments in his wake; on these his eyes were fixed, a thousand yards away.

Supporting his shuffle, his hands were wrapped tightly around the handle bar of an old Wal Mart shopping cart, the wheels wobbling in fits and starts at the uneven walkway in front of him. The plastic cross-hatch side of the cart facing the street was almost entirely broken away, leaving the reveal to any passer-by: it was completely empty.

I saw this man, sad and broken, who by all visible accounts had nothing in this world, save a shopping cart. And even that didn't work.


I then put in The Cure's Disintegration, called my parents to tell them I was sorry, and cut myself - just to feel. Please excuse the emocity. The seven o'clock show is completely different. Try the veal.