If the two highway legs were equal, taking the hypotenuse would save time compared with the right angle legs. But rarely is that the case. Instead, as in the instance relevant to the story, the hypotenuse is slower because of a few traffic lights, geography, and various sights – all of which make it more interesting than the monotony of the interstate highway system.
Having taken this route numerous times, it was no problem to again spot the small playground with two basketball hoops where I had previously spent some important relaxation time on my five-hour drive to West Henrietta.
Excepting a guy who may have been overage for the apparatus but was having fun on a kid’s swing in an adjacent section, there was nobody else around. He neither talked on a phone, nor even displayed one. Stunning in this day and age.
After shooting solo for a while, I asked him if he wanted to shoot some hoops. He smiled and came over immediately; his wrist was adorned with at least a half-dozen bracelets of one kind or another. I asked no questions about their meaning; it struck me as being prematurely personal. After he badly missed a few shots, he announced that football was really his sport, as a wide receiver.
Slim, seemingly in good shape, he was 19 years old and about to join the Army — his answer to my question about his education path.
“Why,” I asked.
“Everybody in my family is in the Army.”
I was reminded that a military veteran of my acquaintance has commented that the military is becoming a family business. I already knew that a handful of states are disproportionate to the military roster, and there is a skew to the smaller towns within those states.
I explained my presence on the court as a break in a day of driving. As I turned to leave after bumping fists, he said, “and you get to meet new people.” Interesting, a total stranger with zero hesitancy about interacting with somebody decades older.
I’m such an idiot. I should have stopped in my tracks, turned, and asked him to explain what he meant. Thinking ahead to my destination and my desire to get there before a particular store closed was the implicit rationale for my continuing to move to the car and not stopping to talk more.
Was he curious, a trait I value highly, or was it a vanilla comment, politeness period.
He seemed to be comfortable in his own skin, an admirable quality often not found in young people, regardless of their position on the spectrum of intelligence or their apparent credentials.
Why would I return to the scene without a secondary reason for taking that route, a three-hour drive from home. I know zero about his schedule, habits, activities, nor do I know his first name.
Is this part of a search for meeting and being with somebody completely unconnected to any other aspect of my life, a relationship from scratch as it were, with no regard for age or any other entry on what is probably a long list of differentiating characteristics.
Was his comment a throwaway observation, devoid of any meaning beyond the words used. Am I trying to read more into it than makes any sense whatsoever. Is the whole deal an itch that must be scratched. If so, given the absence of helpful information, it dictates a completely speculative road trip. Given my calendar control and love for both reading and writing, it would not be time wasted.
Do I need a logical cover story for being there on this hypothetical second meeting. Simple; I’m a financial consultant on my way to a prospective client meeting in Elmira, about an hour away from the above referenced basketball hoop/playground. It’s 2pm; I’m checked in at the cheapest accommodation around, plenty of time to get some relaxation. I wonder what the court activity there is like on a Saturday, disserted like so many in favor of video games, or a spot where multiple young people congregate to play, talk trash, and maybe imbibe or inhale something.
At 2pm, it’s obviously many hours until evening, when an acceleration of the latter two descriptors would be more apropos; perhaps again there will be a young man swinging as if he did not have a care in the world. Perhaps he will want to do some shooting, though it is not his sport. Perhaps he seeks conversation about – who knows, support for his Army decision, reasons why going military is not his best idea, formulation of what might be a better idea – or none of this, simply an undefined link to a stranger.
It would be interesting to compare family descriptions, habits, addictions of various kinds – both innocent and not so innocent, culture, pasts, the future. All shared without any expectation of situations being a call for fixing, nor of any judgement as to a life path. Experiences, opinions, yes, but no more. A really comprehensive intellectual date as it were, not a complicated marriage.
My longtime gay friend Taylor (he is an artist and typically is addressed with only one name) would in likelihood have labeled the young man on the swing as “cute.” He might have followed with, “I wonder if he likes cats,” Taylor’s most consistent, reliable companions over the three decades I have known him.
Although I have met several of Taylor’s friends, including one whose role is to support Taylor while accepting somewhat demeaning language from him, I have never seen Taylor in action, attempting to get a name and a phone number. The image of him doing so on a rural playground rather than at an urban club is quite amusing.
As always in my restless mind, there is the question: how much do being alone and being lonely overlap. Similarly there is the consistent truism that one can be alone in a crowd. How much conversation with the stranger at the playground would it take to uncover something akin to our relative truths in confronting the issue of being alone, either literally or figuratively. What is his range of independent decision making, an advantage I have that connects to financial solidity.
I have to wonder whether the current political atmosphere in the USA adds to the negativity often attached to living solo. Perhaps it’s the social media garbage or the misuse of AI.
Or maybe it’s just me, particularly as I look ahead to a 2026 calendar with a multiple of the blanks of prior years, in fact, an unprecedented situation and challenge.
Okay, end of story, no repetition of interaction number one, but I did have a small meal at the aging Red Rose Diner, where you must be eligible for social security to be a patron. It had a counter and a row of tiny tables, with equally diminutive chairs; the back of customer A was in frequent contact with the back of customer B. The beefstew soup looked like the liquid residue of a walk through a mud flat, but it was delicious.
Lots of reading and writing, and enough hoops to produce a sweat.
End of “Fiction.”