I feel caught in a stampede, but Dylan just handles them.“Sorry, man,” she says to a boy who looks just a few years older than us, holding an angry dog on a leash.To the ruder men who get up in our way as we’re walking, she says simple, hard no’s.Whenever Ingrid and I got out of the suburbs, into Berkeley or San Francisco, and saw how other people lived, Ingrid would cry at the smallest things—a little boy walking home by himself, a stray cat with loose skin and fur draped over bones, a discarded cardboard sign saying HUNGRY please help. She would snap a picture, and by the time she lowered her camera, the tears would already be falling. I always felt kind of guilty that I didn’t feel as sad as she did, but now, watching Dylan, I think that’s probably a good thing. I mean, you see a million terrible things every day, on the news and in the paper, and in real life. I’m not saying that it’s stupid to feel sad, just that it would be impossible to let everything get to you and still get some sleep at night.I walk fast with Dylan up Eighteenth to Valencia and then across to Guererro, until we finally reach Dolores Street and I see the park.“This is my old school.”
