"daddy, daddy," a nappy haired toddler was calling me. he was trying to wiggle out of the bus seat that he and what looked to me his teen mother were holed in.
i thought, at first, the confused tot mistook the puerto rican guy in the seat to my left for his father. but as our bus rolled on, the tot was persistent in singling me out.
i don't know what to make of this day, so far. first, i woke up with this urgency to accomplish a task i've never dreamed doing before: to buy a metallica album.
i remember getting out of bed after my clock radio did its despicable thing thinking i really need to download a metallica album. i only got back my bearing as i was on my way to be completely relieved in the toilet.
then, as always, i went for breakfast in my diner and, as her wont, carmela, the mexican waitress, greeted me with her skewed smile while asking me if it's the usual for me again today. i nodded and went immediately to my paper as i await for my belgian waffle and artery choking crispy bacon.
but minutes later, a bowl of oatmeal, drowned with cinnamon dusting on top, and a separate bowl of not so fresh fruit salad, made it to where i was.
"what is this?" i hollered out. "isn't that what you always order?" carmela yelled back.
maybe because i eke out such a humdrum existence that my initial reaction to these trifling mix-ups in my daily rote was one of joy, actually. suddenly, i was moved to think, to speculate, that somebody who eerily looks like me (god help him!) and with uncannily similar ways has been leading a parallel life to mine. only healthier and more willing to dare take on worthwhile enterprises. like fatherhood, perhaps.
somehow, it felt being in a shakespeare comedy, that of his usual caper of mistaken identities. and i tingle in the possibility of meeting, sooner, this other me, this fuller person.
when i was growing up, i always heard myself praying for a life other than the tedious one i had in the island. "please lord, let me out of here," i would always begin my prayers. "anywhere but here."
the befuddled kid still swathed in a winter jacket and his mother, a lacy thong peeking out of her very low strung jeans, also got off at fordham road.
as i followed them towards the train station, the boy was at it again, yelling out "daddy, daddy, daddy" to me. his voice, so shrill, so piercing, rose up to the sky like a prayer.