The one-eyed, shirtless drunk guy…
Say, what? A couple of people have laughed at this shirt, nodding knowingly (or because they were afraid they missed the "joke"). Most go, "huh?"
A few members of my family and I were walking around The Alamo -- you know, the one they always show during Spurs basketball games, alternating with the Riverwalk, because San Antonio doesn't have a cool NYC skyline or a place for boats in the bay. Oh, it's also the one that Santa Anna obliterated in the Texas Revolution about 160 years ago, only to have it be a rallying cry to this day.
Now The Alamo is a museum pretty much in the middle of San Antonio, and it's fun to go look at, to stand and think: "on this very spot, some guy stood, defending his life."
It's a good area to walk around on a nice day.
One nice day we were doing just that and a shirtless guy who had been sitting on the corner with a few other guys jumps up and jogs over. He said, "Mphmom, seumzmm, eeiis."
I don't hear well, so I thought I had just missed it, and I said, "Sorry?" and he said, "Mphmom, seuzmzz, EEIIS."
This happens to me quite a bit; it comes with being largely deaf. I looked at over my wife, who was rocking the Lucky jeans that day and in general just looking really hot. This is a normal look for her.
She doesn't see well (without her glasses) but hears like a bat (I KNOW!! - a highly romantic complement). So I look at her and she shrugs. If SHE can't understand him, I'm in big trouble. So I take another stab at it: "I'm sorry," I say as I lean closer to him, and smell the alcohol for the first time (I'm a little slow, yes). He adjusted the patch over his eye and slowly said, "You are a lucky guy. I had a wife like that, and a family. And I threw it all away." He said it about five more times, I shook his hand and said, "you are right, I am lucky."
Since then, I've remembered that guy often. He didn't look terrible, he looked like he'd had a good life until maybe a year or two ago. He was shirtless but not super-skinny or all flabby. Clearly something was wrong with an eye -- there was a patch over one of them. But he hadn't been down very long, in my estimation.
He's me after a year of bad choices.
And he was right. I am lucky. Perhaps better said, "blessed"; I have my own challenges, one of them being the same challenge this man faced. I don't know why I'm spared, but I'll take it, and I'll hope that this guy got it together and got his family back together.
Did I go back and try to help him? No, I selfishly took what he said and walked off, eventually getting that awesome shirt for Father's Day. But, I hope that his kindness to me, to not ask me for money or be weird or anything (well, a little weird, I guess); for him to jog over to tell me essentially: "your wife is hot, your boys are handsome, you are LUCKY. DON'T BLOW IT!" He said I was lucky and it wasn't because I had a nice car (I don't) or that he saw my palatial estates (don't have that either), he didn't know what I do for work. This sage only saw my family, the only thing he knew about me was my family, and he said I was lucky.
And he was right.
