You’ve been on a train, right? Most people have, I like to think. Well, I ride them just about every workday. Generally, when you step down from the train to the platform, and the conductor is standing there, he will say courteous things such as “Watch your step,” “Have a good day/night,” or “Drive safely.”
Well last night, getting off the train (de-training, they call it now, which I find completely ridiculous), I was behind what I will courteously call a “classic hippie.” Dreadlocks, thick beard, raggy clothes, a beat up guitar with no case, and a very large backpack, and a sun-worn look about him. He was maybe between 25 and 35, maybe, now that I look back at him in my mind’s eye. The train slowed and stopped, the conductor opened the steps and stepped down to the platform and began his litany of courteous farewell messages. When it came to the hippie, he didn’t bat an eyelash, just changed his routine from “Watch your step” to “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.”
I can vaguely remember some of the times of my hippie period, and one thought that gives me great joy is that if this particular hippie happened to be under the influence of any mind-bending psychotropics, that casual greeting may have had a profound influence on his mindset for as long as it remained in his short-term memory, which probably seemed much longer than it really was.
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