OFTEN I take off and don’t post on Thursdays and Fridays. This was going to be one of those days, but then this happened:
I was out of coffee creamer so I went CVS to grab some since this Wawa is being remodeled, and the supermarket wasn’t open yet. I strolled in and a guy from my old neighborhood is in the CVS, holding a basket with some stuff in it.
Six in the morning and he’s halfway across Philadelphia, wearing that Redskins sweatshirt that he’d cut the sleeves off of sometime in the 1990’s. I never thought I’d see that shirt again. It’s almost pink now.
“Still like them pigeons, I see.” He said referring to my Eagles jersey, as he offered his hand. “You mean the division champs?” I responded as I shook his hand. He shook his head like he had some inside information. “Not this year. You see how scared your boy Foles looked last week? 2014 gonna be a nightmare.” (I could have asked why he’d watched an EAGLES game, but I decided not to. Haters need their fuel, right?)
(From here on, I have to paraphrase some of this, because I didn’t have my recorder on me.)
“We got y’alls DeSean. That’s why Foles is scared. How y’all gonna stop us now? We gave y’all a run for your money back when y’all had him and we didn’t. Now we got him and y’all don’t.” Then he said it. “I see a couple blowouts being served up to the pigeons this year.”
I couldn’t just let that go, so I responded. “Maybe, but we should be able to make up that ground when we destroy the Redskins twice this year. So who do you see those blowouts coming from?” The he says either “Oh you got jokes?” Or “So you got jokes.” One of them. And I just said “Naw. The Redskins got all the jokes. Dan Snyder, Bobby G3, DeSean and the gang…”
At this point I almost laughed in his face, because when I said the last bit, he actually covered his mouth. I have no idea why. But watching a grown man recoil like that over just words, was hilarious. He must have sensed I was going to laugh, because this man who had just shook my hand, simply walked off without uttering another sound. Then he got in line for one of those self-checkout things.
It’s been almost 2 hours and I still can’t figure out what set him off. Any ideas?