An Active Mind

So I'm taking a walk from my old people's mobile home park to my local coffee watering hole. It's a nice day.  I look pretty normal.  I don't look too weird.  I'm not dressed aggressively.  I don't look like I'm "up to something."   I don't have a big weapon clearly visible, protruding from the waistband of my dress pants.  I look like a partially distracted dude taking a walk.

There's a condominium complex about half way that I often detour through, partly because it gets me off of a busy road and into a quieter neighborhood.  There's a sign at the entrance which states only automobiles bearing the HOA sticker are permitted to park there.  I assume this is private property but I don't really care.  It's not an important sign.  It doesn't say "Trained Guard Dogs on the Property."  That sign would get my attention.

As I'm tooling along a car slows and the passenger side window eases down, an old guy with his wife beckons to me, and he says, politely: "Excuse me, sir, do you live here?"

I peer at him for a couple of beats, my mind clicking through all kinds of possible responses, most of them not that good.  In the old day I would have just kept walking, usually fighting off the urge to say: "Fuck are you?  Maybe he was lost in there and wanted some help but, being suspicious to the point of paranoia, I figured he was a nosy old bastard who decided he was going to enforce a condominium dictate about making sure anyone on the property had an authorized reason to be there.

"I'm visiting a friend,"I said.  "So maybe you could move along."  I peered in at him again.

"Well, thank you," he said.  "You just answered my question."

"Yes," I replied.  "I know I just answered your question.  Are you just about ready to move off?"

I didn't say most of those things.  I did say the first thing, the lie about visiting a friend.  I toyed with another response: "I'm visiting a client here - my office is a block away so I thought I'd walk over on such a nice day."  I could have told them that my mother was selling her house and looking for a one bedroom condo closer to her son.  Some other ideas presented themselves as I looked at this old guy and his crone, none of them possessing a shred of accuracy. 

I also considered telling the truth, but this would have meant that I would have had to listen to his explanation on why I wasn't allowed to be where I was, a fact I already possessed, and then I might have been provoked into suggesting that he call the police if he had any problems with how his day was proceeding.  All of the possible lies - including the one that unspooled from my mouth - were a lot more fun.  I enjoy lying.  I'm a good liar.  I have a natural aptitude for lying which I've honed meticulously by lying repeatedly over many years.

I walked the rest of the way through the complex and exited onto the main road, proceeding on my merry way.