Man on the street
Last night I get home a little before five — the first time I've been home since early Saturday morning. I took a rejuvenating shower — the kind where you feel like a completely different person afterwards — and headed out to a delayed Mother's Day dinner with Mom and bro.
I pull out of my parking space and start driving through the parking lot when I see these two guys in the middle of the road. I am swearing at them quietly, urging them to get out of the road, when I see that one of them has a video camera and the other guy looks somewhat familiar. He waves to get my attention.
Apparently some creep in my neighborhood has been giving kids drugs in return for letting him take dirty pictures of them. And now, the public wants to know what I think about it. I'm shocked at first — just because my community seems kind of sleepy and family-oriented. There are tons of little kids, mostly from first generation families.
I've interviewed enough people to know what a reporter wants to hear, so I try to articulate myself in soundbites. The camera is “all up in my grill,” so to speak, and the reporter, a gel-y haired, questionably Latino, and decidedly homosexual (but he seems to butch it up for the camera) thirtysomething asks me just how shocked I am.
So shocked, I reply in scare quotes.
Later that night, I tape the news on the Fox affiliate. My segment conveniently airs during a commercial break on the Real World Road Rules Challenge: The Inferno. I'm fairly certain he'll use the first quote I gave him, which concisely outlined my surprise, but instead he uses something I say later about the fact that the guy's apartment is 300 feet from my bedroom and I think that is “astonishing.” After the segment airs, I question my use of the word “astonishing.” As if he is luring underage kids to his apartment and having doves magically fly out from his sleeves.
I get self conscious of how I look on camera. Initially, I think I look bloated — like the camera has added 4 weeks of nonstop Big Macs — but second and third viewings (yes, I rewatched it thrice, even freeze-framing it so I could pick out flaws) I don't look bloated but I look rubbery. Hard to describe, but I guess I have a more expressive face that I think. That, and I am squinting because the sun was directly in my eyes.
Up next: my weekend in NYC. I'll recount my activities over the weekend and contemplate the city itself. As well as my thoughts on whether I should move there or not.