Barbara Schmitz

It is very hot—92 today—to be wearing a stocking cap, but the adolescent swaggering through the grocery store automatic door doesn’t seem to mind; does not even appear to be perspiring. The tugged-down hat is part of his carefully orchestrated outfit: bagging pants, screaming t-shirt, high-topped shoes. The young woman who yells to her friends from an open pickup window is attired for summer season in strapless stretch tube top, slipping down toward bountiful cleavage valley. She tugs it up in front as she races toward the two who have just passed a cigarette between them like a baton on a relay team. Her white chest gleams like burnished treasure as they giggle loudly there in the corner and I glance down to see what costume I have selected to present myself to the world today. I smile; it’s my sky blue shirt with large deliberately faded Peace sign, smack dab in the middle, plus grey suede Birkenstocks—a message that “I lived through the sixties and am so proud.” None of the young look my way. I round the corner and walk into Evening descending.