Yesterday it rained in Sacramento. Yesterday I didn’t pay close enough attention to the weather forecast in Sacramento. Rather than parking near my office, I decided to park about a mile or so away and ride my skateboard in to work. It’s fun and gets me a little exercise. The ride in to work was quite pleasant. The ride back to my truck wasn’t so much, and the rain was not the worst part.

I left my office around 5 PM, at which point a steady rain was falling. Skateboarding in the rain sucks. Getting wet sucks, having your wheels get super slippery sucks. That would’ve been plenty to spoil what’s usually an enjoyable ride. Not only did I have to endure getting soaked and trying not to fall and bust my ass on the pavement, but I also dodged what could have been a quite unpleasant encounter.

I work in a building in downtown Sacramento. It’s also very near the river and Old Sacramento. These three elements make it prime territory for homeless people and crazy people… and often people that are a 1-2 punch of both. To skate from my building to my truck, I have to go along the river walk alongside the river. The river walk has lots of benches and open electrical sockets. This is practically a luxurious hotel to the homeless. They can sit on a bench and stare at the river and also plug in their stereos and listen to music. This is usually fine. I skate past homeless people every day who are just admiring the view and talking to their imaginary friends, no problem. I used to talk to myself too, but I was only 3 and tried not to do it in public or in a manner that made it appear I was arguing with myself.

So back to yesterday. As I said, it was rainy pretty steadily and I was skating down the river walk. On rainy days, the usual homeless folks are taking cover somewhere sheltered rather than hanging out getting rained on. This was the case as I started my way down. The river walk is probably about the length of two football fields and fairly slender. As I got about halfway down, I noticed that indeed not all the homeless folk had headed for cover. At the end of the river walk, I spotted one. This would usually not register as being anything of consequence; however, this gentleman was standing out in the rain wearing only a pair of denim pants. No shoes, no socks, no shirt of any kind, and due to his pants being drenched and sagging with water, I had a pretty good idea of the fact that he probably was going commando as well.

Perhaps it’s just me being a Nervous Ned, but when I spot a shirtless, shoeless man hanging out in the rain after the sun has gone down, it raises a bit of a red flag. You don’t hear many stories of a shoeless, shirtless man out in the rain changing your grandma’s flat tire on the side of the road. I spotted the dude quite a ways away and at first thought that perhaps he was just a highly fashionable gentleman wearing a skin tight ostrich leather coat and Italian leather shoes. As you now know, that wasn’t the case. When I got about 30 yards away, he had done a sufficient amount of pacing and turning to and fro for me to be able to conclude that he was indeed just a guy standing out in the rain looking like a lunatic. This then got me thinking of the multitude of possibilities that I should be prepared for when I passed him by. Here are a few examples of what my brain was envisioning happening (in order of likelihood) as I gingerly floated by on my skateboard like a prey waiting to feed the predator:

1) Crazy guy would wait until the last second, pounce on me like a hungry leopard, smash me across the face with my own skateboard, throw me over the river walk wall on to the bank and sodomize my unconscious body.
2) Crazy guy would wait until the last second, pounce on me like a crazy shirtless guy and bite my nose off of my face.
3) Crazy guy would wait until the last second, Liu Kang Mortal Kombat karate style kick me off of my skateboard, smash me across the face with it and skate away with my property.
4) Crazy guy would wait until the last second, turn to face me and compliment me on my excellent taste in shoe wear.

Now that my brain had cooked up it’s top 4 logical responses from the crazy guy, I was prepared to pass by in defense mode. I approached, keeping him in my sites and as I got about 10 feet away, as expected, crazy guy turned and faced me. As he turned, he made direct eye contact. In order to try to diffuse what I had concluded would most likely be a very uncool situation, I politely nodded to the man and said hello to which he responded by saying, “You’re gay” as I cautiously floated by continuing on to my truck and eventually back home.

My feelings were so hurt by his assumptions about my sexual proclivity that as he turned back around to face the river, I quickly jumped off my board and proceeded to option 1 his unconscious body. That’s not true.

What IS true is that I have a solution to Sacramento’s ongoing homeless problem. Two words. BROKEN BLUETOOTHS. Think about it. The problem with homeless people isn’t necessarily that they don’t sleep in a house at night. The problem is that they make me uncomfortable when they’re shouting at nobody (yes, that is the real problem). If we took all our broken bluetooths and forced homeless people to wear them at all times, it would just look like a bunch of dirty, smelly businessmen having heated business discussions on their wireless head sets. It’s genius!