Two days from now I will be in the donation drive-through of Goodwill facility in Prettytown, dumping off crap as the mass revision of possessions enabled by the Shed Project continuous apace, and the following event will occur just as we are getting ready to leave.

A guy, probably about thirty, who very much has the look of someone employed by Goodwill Industries due to a ‘disability’ of the genetic type, will be walking out of the place toward the parking lot with the ebullience of someone just getting off shift and headed toward better things than a job.

He’ll look at me a few moments too long, but with a giant lunar smile, and turn back around to face me fully before saying:

Hey like you used to be that drummer guy, RIGHT?

I said hell yeah that’s right, I’m the DRUMMER!

And we both laughed, because we both knew what he was saying and had no idea what he was saying at exactly the same time.

Maybe I reminded him of John Entwhistle or Keith Moon.

Maybe I just fit the archetype of a drummer that lives somewhere in his head.

We’ll never know and it makes no difference.

I am and will always be that drummer guy. This random stranger will know it in his bones and be compelled to proclaim it loudly and joyfully, with a shock of recognition and delight, and absolutely no fear of looking stupid about anything at all, even though he’s probably been called exactly that a thousand times by five hundred people all through the thirty years.

I embrace the identity of the part of me that drums in him.