Dream flash:

I’m forty,

maybe forty five,

and I’m pumping.

Yep,

I’m definitely pumping –

eighty pounds,

five speeds,

on a bike so heavy you gotta pedal downhill.

“Messenger,” they call it.

Me? I call it klunker.

In real life it’s a Schwinn.

Big baskets.

Klunker’s got big baskets.

My stuff

is in those baskets.

And I’m pedaling.

I’m also imagining.

I’m imagining I’m David Fulcher –

big Black guy,

used to play safety for the Bengals.

I’m imagining

while pedaling

uphill

standing

that people are looking at me

and they’re saying,

“Look, Dude!

It’s David Fulcher!

On a Schwinn!”

Only older…

and shorter…

and white.

“When, what to my wondering eyes should appear

But a…” little Black kid

who sprints into the street,

hops a-straddle of the klunker’s rear rack,

sings “Ya da yad ya da yah da, yada yada yah dah”

in a melody I know I know from somewhere,

and then –

in what passes for old lady falsetto on a nine year old boy –

he shouts in my ear for the whole world to hear,

“And your little dog, too, white man!”

Before I can think of anything to say,

the kid hops off and runs away.