MAKE LAUGHTER THE SHORTEST DISTANCE BETWEEN STRANGERS ~

Walking across England’s Cotswolds with Dad in 2004

Sometimes people who have nothing have everything they need. Near a North Sea oil port, I came face to face with unrehearsed survival. Speed walking through a gritty quarter of Hull, England, I nearly tripped over a rhetorically blessed drifter, living in an urban lean-to, adrift in reverie. After sharing a few canned ales, our conversation swayed to the contents of his tattered olive rucksack.

As he fished each item out, he surrendered multi-colored histories of his worldly possessions and arranged them on the sidewalk, exhibiting and professing the import of rope, tarp, a risqué magazine, airline eyeshades, his “idea registry,” and an antique army mess kit.

Lastly, he produced a damp, hulking dictionary. Holding it high and with eyes widened he swore, “Mate, this book’s got everything.”

– – – – –

“We need the tonic of wildness.” —Thoreau

A broken clock is still right twice a day. —Polish proverb

*from: The Directions to Happiness: A 135-Country Quest for Life Lessons