Misery likes company

I was in New York all Thanksgiving Week. A very busy week for Thanks and Giving, the holiday campaign for St.Jude Children's Research Hospital. Jan was able to come in the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. We were having Thanksgiving lunch with the patients and their families and then Thanksgiving with Maggie and Dennis and Jake and Dennis's family.
Just a little context for a moment of epiphany, delivered by a crazy person no less.
Day after Thanksgiving. Friday. Jan and I sleep in, get our shit together and head out of the apartment around 11:00 a.m. for late breakfast.
We walk up the stairs to the sidewalk, make a left to head to Montague Street, and this dread-locked black dude, little wild in the eye, little wacko in his whole vibe, walks towards us and I immediately put on my "I belong here. You are not going to enter my world" look.
I can already hear him muttering and I know he's talking at us. Now Jan is not aware of this at all. It's almost like this dude has got some kind of special signal that's just playing in my head. For my ears only.
And I really can't hear or understand what he's saying, but as he rushes by us I can pick out words like 'you misearable...' 'dontchya...' 'what the fuck'. But before I can even register whether I should be offended or afraid or..anything, he's gone and I convince myself it was all in my head, he wasn't talking to or at me, but was merely a typical New York street dude with a lot to say to no one in particular.
Cut to:
Next day, Saturday, night really..feeling kind of lousy, so I ditch out of maggie's before anyone else so I can get home get some sleep since I have to be up early. I'm walking down Henry Street towards the apartment and this same guy is walking down a side street toward me. Now I don't really recognize the man, but as he get close to me he says, to me, and this time there's no mistaking he's talking to me, "Still as miserable as ever, huh?" Then he walks by on down the street.
I kinda laugh, more like choke, and exclaim something and then realize he wasn't waiting for an answer. He was just making an observation. Apparently, the second one in two days.
I think back to the earlier encounter. He was talking to me. And he did seem angry. Angry, because I was being perceived as being 'miserable'.
And I had to think, what does my face say to any Joe blow on the street? That I'm miserable? That I'm unhappy? Not that I should walk around with a silly, half ass grin on my puss, but for a slightly whacko stranger to observe enough within the span of seconds, at least enough to make a very verbal judgement about me, did give me pause.
Oh sure, there was part of me that wanted to run after the guy and say, 'Fuck you man. Who the fuck do you think you are to call me miserable? You don't look like you live the life of a glass half full kind of existence yourself, man."
But then I realized maybe he was right. I wasn't particularly sad or miserable or malcontent on either of the two occassions we ran into each other, but there must have been something on my face that elicited the same response, thirty-six hours apart?
Or maybe he was just crazy. Either way I find myself now, very randomly, checking myself out. What's my face doing? Am I smiling? Am I frowning? Are my shoulders tense? Am I scowling?
The last time I did this little internal exercise that manifested itself by my face and body language acting out the various emotions on my face and body, I was in the subway. And then it struck me. I had become one of those street dudes. Just for that moment. All it would take is for me to ask the person sitting next to me, "Am I smiling? Do I look happy?" for me to be zero degree's of separation from my dread-locked brother on Henry Street.
Keep smiling!