Earlier in the day, my dog tried to bite a woman who might have had a slight mental impairment. This woman saw us about twenty yards away, and as soon as she spotted Heidi her face began to melt from happiness. She was dressed all in purple, and had a collection of accessories that suggested she had been prepared for an urban journey: Sun hat, comfortable sneakers, fanny pack, water bottle, TTC map. She was very nice and politely asked if she could pet my dog, and as soon as she bent down to do so, Heidi, like a little torpedo of hate, snapped at her. Normally, Heidi is a dream with adoring women on the street, but not in this case.
The dog seems to exhibit some hostility toward unconventional people. When the homeless men in front of Tim Horton’s reach out to touch her, she always snarls, and if somebody just seems, well, socially off, again, she’s hostile. I don’t know if this is some sort of instinct, or if she’s just reading a subconsciously defensive posture that I assume when I encounter somebody whom I figure might behave in an unpredictable nature, but there you have it.
I always feel sorry for these people. For whatever reason, they’re just out of synch with the mainstream and have difficulty interpreting the social cues that we all take for granted, and each time they reach out, they’re confronted with some sort of rebuke when all they were trying to offer was the sincerity of their affection.
Up on Dupont, a girl tried to sell Gelato from a storefront window. She rests her chin on her hand and gazes out onto the street, but really she’s staring off somewhere else, perhaps the past or the wedding she hopes to plan one day. On the street in front of her are two workmen, both smoking and killing time. One of them is acting out a fight for the other one. To do this properly, he must use the word FUCK an awful lot. He’s executing slow-motion karate kicks and left hooks with a sincerity and attention to detail that makes it positively comical. Every once in awhile he looks over at the Gelato girl, convinced that she’s focusing on him, and not some far away point in her mind.