Elfnoodles

There’s this guy who lives nearby and gets home in the evening around the same time I do, so he frequently passes me in his scramble out of the subway station.

He’s an odd dude – he has a sort of gait that you might use if you wanted to hurry it up in your last few yards to a waiting bus, but didn’t need to actually run. It’s this kind of harried shuffle, leaning forward, mostly on the balls of his feet. He moves that way the entire trip home though, through the station, up the escalator, and on down the street, and always with a little duffel bag held stiffly out to one side. His shuffling makes such a distinctive sound that if I don’t have headphones in I can always tell when he’s coming up behind me.

He also eschews sidewalks, preferring to shuffle in the street five feet to the right of the sidewalk regardless of whether the sidewalk is occupied (it usually isn’t) or the street has car traffic (it usually does).