Things you don't find on your lawn in Durham

My neighborhood, Adams Morgan, has a multiple personality. On weekdays, weeknights, and weekends before 10, it's a tragically-hip, culturally diverse place full of oh-so-trendy people in the current hipster uniform of skinny jeans and converse all-stars. Shaved heads, maroon hair, dreadlocks, or shape-shaved hair is the norm.  Most restaurant trend to locally-owned ethnic (every kind you can think of) or coffee shops full of bored and pierced baristas. 

On Friday and Saturday nights, though, something happens to Adams Morgan. For some reason, suburban college kids from VA and MD have decided A-M is *the* place to be. So a couple of enormous Miller-Lite-and-big-slice-pizza bars throw their doors open and festivities begin. My little street is a couple of blocks away from the main action. This means I don't have to put up with the noise or hassles from puke-drunk frat boys and their Brittany wanna-be dates.  But odd things wash up on my street on Saturday and Sunday mornings. When I walk Toby I'm likely to find empty beer or vodka bottles, red bull cans, and fast-food refuse that fuels those drunken early morning hungers. 

This morning was a new one though: I took Toby out the back to have is first short walk of the day. There by our fence, curled up in the fetal position was... a large, snoring young man. He had all the signs: pink polo shirt with popped collar, expensive jeans, underwear waistband showing, K-Swiss shoes with no sox. As I was checking my e-mail I took these shots. He eventually woke up, and grabbed for his cell phone, which he was apparently using as a pillow. He sat up, shook his head, and unsteadily tried to stand. He wobbled, teetered, almost fell, but gained his footing. He thrust his hand into his right pocket, I assume looking for money which he didn't find. He staggered down the hill to my street and stopped. He looked right, looked left, chose a direction seemingly at random, then walked very slowly and carefully towards who know what.

Comments

[stew]

What you DO find on lawns in Durham, apparently, are discarded cast-iron bathroom sinks. At least that's what turned up in my front yard last week.

[mike]

I woke up one Sunday morning to find a home exercise machine on my front lawn.

[Shannon]

Oh, this completely makes my day. I wonder where he was headed, and why his friends had ditched him the night before. (Granted, I would ditch a man for wearing a pink popped-collar polo, but I'm not very nice.)