My Man Malik

I was walking back to my car after a meeting one morning when I stopped a grandma and a young boy who were walking to school.  I always like to see this.  Grandma and grandson.  In Spain work starts later than in the U.S. so kids often walk with their parents or a parent on the way to school a spectacle that I very much enjoyed seeing.  The presence of a matriarch or father-figure with a child heading to school in the cool morning air.  I don't go anywhere anymore where there's cold morning air.  Fuck that.  Cool morning air I can do but you can get yourself to school any way you can when it's cold.

I started a conversation with the boy.  He appeared to be ten or eleven years old.  I don't remember exactly what off-kilter thing I opened up with.  Kids generally like me.  I think my off-kilter-ness is sort of arresting.  Like: "what is this adult doing, anyhow?"  They're so eager to please and they're so willing to believe an adult even when the dialogue is so nonsensical that much of the time they stand and look at me, transfixed, flummoxed.  They moved on.  Summer arrived so I didn't get to see them regularly.  School began again and I ran into them again and we talked briefly, again.  I gave him a hug.  He hugged back.  Not long after that, as I was ambling along, I saw the two of them coming my way.  The boy - Malik - separated from grandma and came right in for a hug before the conversation began.  I always try to be super (Sorry, California word) positive with kids, super-energetic and complimentary.  I always felt like I was messing up, falling short, when I was growing up (not because I was being told this but because it was lodged in my mind) so I just can't make anyone feel bad about anything.  Same same as in A.A.

This is, I believe, a mandate I have been given by the Great Spirit.  Recharge people, recharge the world, let peace and positivity and calmness ooze from my Very Being.