now I know

I've been walking to work and back for over a year now. Over the course of that time period, there have been several peculiar occurrences. I've been whistled at, hassled for money, and I've been most annoyingly honked at. I've been asked for directions, yelled at for not knowing, and ridiculed for not having a car. I've suffered the fate of having conversations with familiar people going the same direction. I've stepped in dog shit multiple times. I've helped a blind man cross the street. I've unknowingly walked through a movie set, only to be physically dragged off it. But nothing so bizarre has happened as what I saw today.

Occasionally there are strange smells along my route. Typically those smells emanate from the sewers or dumpsters. But in a freak moment, when the breeze is just right, I catch the smell of urine. This has continued to puzzle me until today when I saw a man walking up the street, away from me, with a stream of fluid exuding from his crotch area into the bushes. I thought for sure it was not what I thought it was. After all, he was walking, the bushes were beside him, and it was broad daylight on a busy street during morning rush hour. That was what I thought until he turned around a corner and I saw him stuffing his stuff back into his pants.

How naive of me to think one would only urinate in the bushes under cover of darkness.