My day-to-day life all takes place within a five to ten square mile bubble. It’s been that way for the past six months, since I moved to a new apartment closer to where I work and do everything else I do. Though I don’t really miss the commute in the mornings and evenings, and I’m glad to have the extra money once spent on gas, it still feels a little weird to me that my whole existence can be contained in such a small area. There’s a whole big giant world out there, and I subsist almost completely in a pinprick-sized portion of it.

Most of my time is spent at my eight hour a day job, and then another eight hours or so goes towards sleep. My calculator just told me that that leaves me with another eight hours daily to go out and exist in this big crazy world we live in. And I spend a lot of that watching TV. But I do sometimes leave the apartment and venture out. Like, if the power goes out or something.

It’s my relative lack of movement in the outside world that makes me all the more amazed by the fact that I keep seeing the same guy with uncanny frequency. I see him walking around at least once a week. And it began long before I even moved down here. I’ve walked past him, on the other side of the street from him, seen him walking by from the window of my office or some restaurant, driven past him, and almost run into him a few times. He literally must walk continuously around the area for me to have seen him as many times as I have.

The reason I always notice him is because he’s odd looking. Not so odd that anyone would run away screaming or even point and laugh really, but he sticks out. He somewhat short, say 5’6”, in his 50’s perhaps, with what I would call a black pompadour for hair, probably dyed, and always wears unfashionably big sunglasses. He’s very Italian looking, in a retired mob thug kind of way. Two qualities about him really stick out to me more than anything else though. One is that he has extremely long arms and big hands for his body, giving him sort of an apish appearance as he walks because they swing behind him with every step. The other is that he always dresses warmly no matter what the weather. That really bothers me. I can’t personally think of anything worse than going for a long walk and not dressing appropriately for it, especially if it means wearing a long sleeved turtleneck on a sunny 90-degree day. You’d think that as much as this guy walks, he’d check the weather report before leaving his house.

But does he have a house? That’s the question that always naturally pops into my head. Where is he coming from, and where does he go back to…eventually? I forgot to mention that he walks pretty fast, sort of giving the impression that he really has something to do and a place to go, unlike the typical homeless people in the area that merely saunter and wander.

I don’t know why I care, but one day I’d like to follow him. I know that sounds crazy, but if I’m ever out on some Saturday with nothing special to do and he should walk by, I think I’d just like to see where he goes and where he ends up.

Assuming, of course, I’m dressed for it.