Sky's the limit.

     It isn't much of a photo. First, the shot makes the street look brighter than it was, at about 8:30, as I came back from walking Kitty around the point. It was pretty dark. The phone commanded me to hold still, and I did, while it sucked up what light there was from the streetlamp.
     But if you look closely, you'll see him. A young man on roller skates who had rolled past me on First Ave, holding a flashlight. He was doing a few circles at the intersection with Center, waiting for a car to pass. 
    That flashlight caught my eye because, as far as I recall, I've never seen anybody skate by at night using a flashlight to guide his way and, I assume, alert cars that he's there. Actually, I rarely see skaters at all. Or skateboarders, for that matter. I assume they're at home scrolling through Tik Tok. Maybe watching videos of skaters. 
     The caution of that flashlight made him relatable to me. I'm a cautious guy. I see kids on their bikes, in groups of three and four, tearing down the street at night, unilluminated, in their dark clothes, and think, "C'mon guys. Don't do that. Stuff happens." I remember having a light on my bike, a big chrome thing, streamlined like a jet liner engine nacelle. It tended to go out of whack, if I recall, the batteries leaking over time.
     But the overwhelming idea left me, in this illuminated skater's wake, was that I had never seen that before. Never. Not a guy skating with a flashlight. And there is something comforting in seeing a creative person do something new. Something hopeful. It's like that day at breakfast, probably 20 years ago, when a waitress asked my younger son how he wanted his two eggs, and he said he wanted one scrambled, one sunny-side up. I looked at him, amazed. In a lifetime of ordering eggs I'd never considered that I could split the order, and left to my own devices would have never imagining it possible. This kid, I thought, is unbound by dull convention. He could do anything.