A goofy encounter

While driving back from Tesco yesterday, I had to stop for a bunch of teenagers who had started to cross the road even though it wasn’t a pedestrian crossing. They looked normal enough, hoodied up and mostly jean-clad, said jeans worn so baggy and low as to give everybody a good glimpse of underwear. One of the last ones to cross was a young lad maybe 14 or 15 years old, skinny and tall, with untidy floppy blond hair. He started by crossing the road in a series of backward hops, then stopped halfway across in front of my car so that he was directly in my line of vision, and grinned at me, looking ridiculously pleased with himself.

I was tired and impatient to get home, yet this kid's smile was so sweet and genuine that I couldn’t help smiling back - but then I raised my eyebrows at him to ask if he was going to cross the road or perform any more tricks. Evidently my eyebrows speak very good mime, because he understood me perfectly well. He held up one finger to say “One moment”, put his hands back in his pockets, then twirled himself across the rest of the road to the other side, a bit like a human top. Then he lolloped off after his friends like an overgrown puppy, and I carried on home, quite unable to stop grinning at the mental image of Goofy the Kid.