Smile on your brother

Not my groundskeeper

I don't know his name. I really don't know anything about him. For all I know he goes home and conducts experiments on mice that will eventually lead to Pinky and The Brain being considered a prophecy instead of a cartoon. But for about two minutes each day, the groundskeeper at the park makes my day.

While there are a great number of things that, well, suck about being unemployed, one thing that doesn't is the time to take a walk when most people are working. So every morning after I drop the little guy off at pre-school, I head out to Mill Creek Park to take a 2.5 mile walk around 8:15 a.m. And every morning, this affable groundskeeper is there, dutifully doing his job to keep it nice and clean.

But every time I walk past him (which is only twice, three times at most), he gives me a hearty smile, a sincere wish that I have a good day, and, lately, wishes to stay warm.

I have no idea what this guy does for the rest of the day, or even if he's as jovial the rest of the day. Maybe he's just a morning person who uses up all his positive energy by lunch time and by the afternoon is a sullen, grumpy, bitter man. Who knows? All I know is the times I walk by, he's everything you'd want a groundskeeper to be.