"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

Now, I was reading when the guy asked me this. On days when I don't have to work, I occasionally go over to Einsteins and get a bagel, then I mosey (I'm in the South now, there is a mosey requirement) on over to the Publix grocery store and have my coffee out on the tables in front before I go in and shop. I bring a book with me sometimes, and this is exactly what our hero was doing when the guy with a backpack came up to me and asked:

"Do you mind if I ask you a question?"

"You just did," I thought, but I said, "Sure," because I am a people person.

"What's your definition of a habit?"

There was no peed-on odor. The hair was neat. The outfit respectable. This fucker was setting me up to preach to me, I knew it.

I have no idea what I said. I think it was something along the lines something that you do repeatedly that it pains you to deviate from, or something like that.

"Yeah," he said. "And where do you think it comes from? Bad habits?"

"You're going to tell me the devil, you fuck," I thought. "Well, there are addictions; there are behavioral and emotional disorders that lead to repetition," I said.

"Well, what is the worst habit you can have?"

"Satan worship, of course, or not praying or something stupid, I thought. C'mon, just get to the big sell," I thought. "Oh, I think that any habit that extinguishes itself quickly because it's killed you is bad. Say a drug habit."

"Drug habits are the worst?"

"JUST GET TO THE DEVIL AND HAVE OUT WITH IT! ANYONE CAN SEE WHERE THIS IS GOING!" I thought loudly. "Well, it depends who you are, I think."

The guy was maybe 5 years older than me. He was black. He wore a cap and had a blue backpack.

"How do you think people get into them?" he asked rhetorically.

"NoT FrEaKiNg PrAyInG!!!!!!" my inner typist was pounding erratically.

"I think that it is because of a bad attitude. A bad outlook," he interrupted my inner monologue.

"Well, bad outlooks are a sort of self-fulfilling thing, aren't they? You get into one, you irritate people and then they, annoyed, keep you there."

"Yeah," he said.

"You suck at preaching," I thought.

"So, basically what I'm thinking is that the important thing is that you keep a positive attitude. A lot people I ask this question say that habits are bad. So, you fight them with a better attitude. I'll let you get back to reading. Have a good day."

That was it. He wanted to talk about habits to a stranger for no particular reason. And he did it more than once.

What a weird habit.

HJ