That´s Our Guy (to be said while removing a top hat and oscillating your wrist)

I´m not sure if I have mentioned the man before, but Tim and I have a vigilante who guards our streets (or watches them as he would put it, with two fingers pointing at his eyes and then surveying ´´his road´´). We call him Sketch Ball. At first i was a little apprehensive of sketch ball, but it didn´t take long for him to grow on me. He started, something like 2 months ago. He´s not a very large man, but what he lacks in stature he makes up for in his strategically placed cardboard boxes to rest his rumpus. He was so dogmatic (yes i know it is in the past tense and you will soon understand why I chose the tense) in his tireless effort to watch our street.

I would now like to tell a story about sketch ball, unless there are any objections. Tim and I were sitting in the town center late one night at what I would not estimate to be something after 10 but before 12. We were sitting on a bench watching the goings on. Aside- I think this is a part of Cofradian life that few volunteers in the past have really experienced, the town center at night, but Tim and I are avid observers from our apartment as well as from the center itself. We spotted a man making his way across the town center in a path which we would intercept. From behind him comes mighty sketch ball, perhaps holding his machete, i can´t remember. Sketch ball grabs the guy´s shoulder and the man turned to him. They argued about something and then the man just walked away. Here´s the kicker. Sketch ball looks directly at Tim and me and then turns and walks away. Sketch ball, there are 8 people that live on the street on which you watch. Two of them just saw you get shrugged off by a homeless man. Don´t you have anything to say to us? Why are we to fear you?

But we love the guy. He´s our sketch ball. He´s provided hours of conversation for Tim and me. We´ve watched him fall asleep at his post and then fall out of his seat onto the ground. Tim and I have bathed in the rain in the streets when we didn´t have water and been embraced by sketch ball´s flashlight and his boyish exuberance and giggling. We have been hit up, countless time for money so sketch ball could go buy a licuado. But as of late we have seen a new sketch ball, and this one is less satisfactory. Lately sketch ball´s lady has been joining him more and more as of late. Oh at first it was nice. We were able to hear snoring in the night from our balcony. We ´startled´ them when they were in a dark hallway on the second floor.

But the honeymoon is over. Now the only thing we find is sketch ball and his lady on the steps of the apartment. Sitting lazily. He doesn´t have the vigor for patrolling the streets he once did. I want the old sketch ball back. The sketch ball who would sit at the end of the street and grunt a response when we called to him. The sketch ball who would take his machete to an empty bucket for a period, just to pass the time. The sketch ball who built a fire on the side of the street, even though it was 85 degrees that night. Someone may look at sketch ball and say ¨what´s the big deal?¨ Sure, sketch ball might not have been much to anyone else. But he was our sketch ball. And I miss him.