7:20 AM, on a Sunday

I am sitting on the front porch enjoy a cup of delicious coffee while the sun rises. Quite a picturesque scene. A young lady walks past my house and we make eye contact.

I politely say, “Good Morning”. She continues looking my direction for 2 or so seconds, before turning her gaze back to the ground and continuing her March, without saying a word.

I sit in complete shock for a split second as I wonder, “What could be wrong with this girl to where she wouldn’t even say Hi back on a lovely Sunday morning to a polite young lad sipping coffee in the morning air. I mean the fact that I am awake this early drinking coffee proves that I am a decent person, does it not? Maybe she is dead? Maybe she hates herself, she isn’t very attractive, that could be it. Maybe it’s me? I haven’t gelled my hair yet. DAMNIT!” I think to myself, “What am I doing outside with ungelled hair.”

Not wanting to pass judgement on a stranger I do my best to spread joy and happiness by saying, “Have a genuinely great day, seriously”. That was a very uncomfortable thing for me to say for a few reasons.

#1. I never like to say more than 2 syllables at a time to strangers, so as to not seem desperate. To accomplish this I resort to classy statements such as, “sup, morning, hey, hi, yo, howsgone, etc”. These short remarks and openers embellish a sense of apathy towards the stranger who is my conversational partner for the moment. My indifference to the stranger only makes me more attractive to them. They think things like, “that dude’s too cool to even use complete sentences when talking to me. I bet when he blogs he uses complete sentences. If I were cooler he would talk to me like I’m a blog reader. I should find an attractive girl I know and hook her up with him, thus providing value so that potentially he will want to be friends”.

#2. I’ve never told anyone, let alone a strange heavy set (but probably doable) female to, “Have a genuinely great day, seriously”. I felt silly saying it.

#3. She could have had a gun and capped me. This happens all the time, watch Cops.

Even after my most sincere efforts the indifferent young lady trudged on, without the decency to acknowledge me and my cup of coffee. My day/week is likely ruined because of this event. Self-esteem has returned to an all time low. Perhaps in the future I will remember to gel my hair?

Or maybe she was just wearing headphones, it was still pretty dark out….

And that ladies and gentleman is how you turn a 4 second encounter into a blog post that takes 40 minutes to write, proof read, SEO, and publish.