What's Up, Stranger?

Often exchanged between people who haven't seen each other in a while, the post title. Something I half expect to hear from my friend, Patrick, whom I haven't seen in about 3 weeks, the next time I see him.
I'll have to explain about the flat tire on the bike that had me on foot and out of visiting range. Plus, he is often not home, making the mile walk to his place a gamble.
I also haven't had the urge to smoke any marijuana lately, something that is a staple at his residence, and kind of his way of greeting guests...

"Lord, Almighty!"
Today, which was the coldest day of the year so far, including last January and February, I set off for the plasma donation center.
Try as I always do to get there earlier, out of consideration for the staff, who have to let people in one minute before closing, and then work overtime (for which they aren't compensated) in order to take their donation. 

If they are ever going to make a mistake and accidentally kill a donor, it would probably happen after 6 p.m. when, in a rush to get the person done, they might overlook something like iodine; or set the machine to extract 6,900 milliliters of plasma out of a person weighing 144 pounds, such as myself, instead of 690. By the time they noticed the puddle of overflow on the floor all around the persons donation station, the donor would be in another world, mingling with his great grandparents. And then they would get out of there even later, after having to mop up, toss the body in the dumpster out back, and then go into the computer to delete any record of his visit...
But, despite my best efforts, I have been an habitual late-comer. I imagine they have a nickname for such people; some medical term for "pain in the ass."
That Darned Cat!

This time, as I was aiming to get on the street car before the one I have so far always wound up on; I realized that I hadn't shaved.
Shaving is a good measure for the sake of not appearing to be homeless, something that is a disqualification from donating. I think this is in case the plasma sample they routinely test comes back showing certain infectious diseases, which means they have to notify the person; to advise him to go immediately to his doctor, and not to come there. Almost every homeless person now has a government phone that they could call, but, that's the rule...
 

Stepping out of the building, clean shaven, I encountered a shivering Harold at the back door, which creature I let in and fed. I then missed that street car by about the same amount of time it took to do that.
The wind was so strong, I would estimate the chill factor was "making it feel like" about 20 degrees. When the snots in your nose freeze and you have to start breathing through your mouth, you know it's cold.

In fact, it was actually "ski mask" weather, as frost-bitten faces would have been a likely danger to anyone caught outside for any length of time. But, in typical Louisiana fashion, most people I saw were dressed in hoodies with maybe a sweatshirt underneath; totally unprepared, despite having the hoods pulled over their heads.
The drivers on the roads were likewise handicapped by not having snow tires, and at one traffic light, which had a patch of ice leading up to it, I watched every other car slide and bump into the one in front of it whenever the light turned red. They would typically get out of their vehicles to check for damage, and then decide that getting back into the warmth of the car was more critical at that moment, than fretting over a broken license plate holder, and taking down insurance company information, etc..

My plasma donation was a success, so I felt good about having supplied one of the raw materials from which life giving medications are manufactured. And, oh yeah; good about the $125 that I was paid...
I joked one time to one of the "plasmapheresis" technicians: "You guy's are making plasma screen TV's back there, aren't you? It's OK, I won't give away your secret..." This got chuckles out of a few of them, with one young guy saying: "Nobody's ever asked that before," as if he had never thought of it.
After donating, I walked the half mile or so to the WalMart, across the street from which is the bus stop where the only bus back to Canal Street (the #62) stops. My phone's battery had died, probably from being frozen, but I remembered that there was a #62 that stopped there at 8:16 p.m. There was a small group of people at the stop, cringing in their hoodies with the hoods pulled over their heads.
After getting cat food and cash back from WalMart, I waited in the warmth of the lobby until shortly before 8:16 p.m., then half ran to the stop. The same group of people that I had seen were still there. There hadn't been a #62 by there for at least the past hour, I was told by a small black lady of about 50 years old, whom I first thought was a man, based upon the small area of face that I could see, peeking through the diaphragm of a hood that had been pulled as tightly closed as its drawstrings allowed.

I gingerly insinuated myself into the personal space of at least one of them, in order to avail myself to the buffer against what was probably a 35 mph wind, in the form of one of the plexiglass walls of the kiosk. During normal weather, I would half expect any of them to say: "Dude, can you not stand so close to me?" but, in a spirit engendered by what was a legitimate "cold emergency," none of them protested.
"I'm glad to see people here," I said to the small black lady, whom I still thought was a man -a Cajun man, as there seems to be a strain of them that are of diminutive stature and have rather androgynous faces. I figured it was fitting to at least make some small conversation with the person I was standing one foot away from. "That usually means the bus is coming. Some people know the schedules. When there's nobody here I always figure I just missed the thing..."

"Uh-huh, that's right," said that person in a voice that gave away the fact that it was a woman..
It seemed like our mutual sense in that regard bespoke of a wisdom that came from intuition and common sense, and I surmised that this might be a rather intelligent lady, despite whatever level of formal education she might acquired in her 50 or so years.

"It's the wind that'll get you," I added.

"Uh-huh, the wind chill!" responded the petite, probably Cajun lady.
"You have to turn your back to it," I added, in the way of excusing myself for any rudeness that she may have perceived from me having my back to her.
 

I cracked open the 24 ounce can of Heineken that I had gotten in WalMart, which was undoubtedly a lot colder than it was when I bought it, and took a few sips, thinking the carbohydrates in it would have a warming effect on me; or the alcohol a numbing one; or both.
I felt a pang of guilt over the fact that, unlike the few people there wearing only hoodies with maybe a sweatshirt underneath, I had had the foresight to don my winter jacket; one which had been given to me by my old friend, Howard, after he had returned from a sight-seeing trip in Alaska, back around 2013. It is, as would be expected, a Howard-sized jacket, copious enough to wrap around me almost twice, and bears the label "Alaska" on it, as if that is the brand name of it. Howard might have said something like: "I don't think I'll be needing this down here," when he presented it to me.

Think again, Howard. We aren't far enough "down" to preclude the need for such a garment. I wonder if he thought about that jacket wherever he is now, whenever he stepped outside on his way to buy a bag of Cheetoz and a 2-liter Pepsi that morning...
At one point, I felt the petite, probably Creole (I've been referring to her as Cajun, but Creole might be the right designation) lady's body press against my back.

She immediately giggled and said: "Sorry, I'm just trying to use the body heat." I noted that she hadn't said "your" body heat, and thought that maybe she thought that that would have sounded too personal.
With about 18 ounces of Heineken in me (the same lady had accidentally kicked the can over, and apologized, although it had been my fault for setting it down in the dark so close to her feet, so I could put my hands in my pockets in between sips) and hearing some almost prayer-like utterances coming from behind me, in Creole patios; I fell into a kind of a reverie about the concentration camp inmates that Solzhenitsyn wrote about in "One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich," and felt sorry for them in hindsight.

But then I steered my thoughts towards feelings of gratitude over having a warm apartment waiting for me, should the #62 ever arrive. I half-incredulously wondered about The Law of Attraction, and what in the world its application to someone in a labor camp, or to myself at that moment, could possibly be.
I focused more strongly on the feelings of gratitude and happiness that I could wring from the situation I was in....I've got a few cans of good food for Harold...I got the money for my plasma...the Heineken seems to be helping... 

Just then, a particularly strong and icy breeze made the kiosk shudder, and a cry issued forth from the lady behind me. "Oh, Lord in Heaven," I paraphrase it as.
And then, I thought about the Howard sized winter coat that I was swimming in, made by "Alaska." I quickly calculated that the dimensions of Howard's girth were equal to just about one of myself; plus one petite Creole lady.

Wasting no more time, I unzipped the front of the jacket, and saying something as inane as "Here," opened it like the mouth of a whale ready to devour a school of squid.
She rushed into it, with another little giggle and I found that it neatly wrapped around her hoodie clad frame and I was able to hold it closed on the side of her opposite me, with one hand, and still have a free Heineken hand. A perfect fit.

"Oh, Lord Almighty, thank you.." she said, as we huddled together like a newlywed couple.
The few other people there, who were all African American, cast at least one glance our way, with expressions on their faces evincing kind of a combination of surprise and admiration.

It made me wonder if the tenor of race relations "down here" are at such a pitch to make them assume that a white man would just as soon watch a lady of color freeze to death than do what I had.
As if to answer a tacit question posed by none of them, the lady said aloud, to no one in particular: "This is an emergency; you gotta do what you gotta do!"
"Amen," the congregation said.

I must say that ol' Howard's jacket never felt so warm inside.
The #62 eventually arrived.
When the lady and I sat in separate seats, the driver kind of smiled, as if she had gleaned what had happened.

Now, I am home, Harold is warm and well fed, and I think I'll turn on my plasma screen TV and see what's on...