There's this old guy hangs around our shopping center. We all figured he was just another bum, er, homeless street person. We thought he lived in the woods behind us. We found out he lives a couple of streets down with his mom. So, he's not homeless although he doesn't seem to be home much. I get there at 6:30 and he's sitting on the mulch bags at the Pig. The ladies say he's still there when they lock up at 6:00 in the evening.

We called him Mr. Wobbly because he rode a bike built for an eight-year old. Maybe his original bike for all we know. It's so small that when he pedals it wobbles. It may be that he's the wobbly one but , no matter. We called him Mr. Wobbly. He seemed harmless enough. He didn’t bother you asking for money. He’d just say hello and drift off into whatever world he actually lived in. No fuss, no bother.

Then he became a fuss and a bother. Also, a bloody mess and a waste of good police work and gave the EMT’s some decent practice. He obviously wasn’t going to be a paying customer but the EMT’s were salaried and didn’t care. They had some special double-latex gloves for people like him.

R'Letta is one of our front counter people. She's a student and works as a fill in. Her mom dropped her off one day right outside the shop. They sat in the van for a moment and talked. Then, R'Letta said, they heard a thump. R'Letta got out and saw Mr. Wobbly sitting on the ground holding his bloody head. His bike was lying there too. She thought he'd hit her so that was his problem. The ladies inside told her she'd better go out and tell her mom not to leave.

"Why? He hit us",R'Letta said.

"Honey, hit and run is hit and run no matter who did the hitting", she was told.

I had come around the side of the building to put my stuff in the trunk of my car and didn’t see what happened but I saw that Mr. Wobbly was wobbling around holding his bloody head.

"Hey, man, you’d better sit down. You have a head injury", I told him. I started to sort of guide him to a sitting position but decided not to touch him. I said out loud that I was going to call 911 but some guy said he already had and he guided Mr. Wobbly down onto the curb. A nice lady went into our shop and got some wet paper towels for him. The 911 operator asked how old the guy was. Mr. Wobbly said he was 61. I guess the operator sighed. Probably no insurance if a 61 year old man is riding a bike and too young for Medicare. Another write-off.

A few minutes later the ambulance pulls up along with a fire truck. Then a police car pulls in. Must be a slow day. Our manager is a trained EMT and had gone out to help. The EMT’s knew her and they had a little chit chat until Mr. Wobbly started moaning and getting on their nerves. The EMT’s put on their super gloves and went to work on him.

The cop was a Wyatt Earp type and assumed that R’Letta was guilty. He had a van, a hurt old man and a bicycle. Open and shut. He was real macho until our manager mentioned that the van hadn’t been moving at the time and Mr. Wobbly was riding against the traffic. She pointed out that the height that Mr. Wobbly would have been was equal to the height od the side mirror of the van, which was turned in now. She should have been a lawyer except she has principles. The cop changed his attitude right away.

This was all very interesting but I was getting bored and was about to go back inside when an unmarked police car pulls in and two detectives jump out. What’s this? It wasn’t a murder. The uniformed cop must have thought that too. He told the two detectives that he had things under control. Mistake. They told him that they were detectives and he wasn’t. The cop was about to tell them to take a hike when he realized that now he could leave.

"Okay, it’s all yours. I’ll file my report and now I’m out of here."

"That’s fine except for being out of here. You stick around a do crowd control", one of them told him.

Eventually, the EMT’s got Mr. Wobbly on the way to the hospital, the fire engine left and the detectives got tired of repeating their question and left. End of story. Not quite. The next day, Mr. Wobbly came in and asked for the nice lady who helped him. That would be our manager. He was told she wasn’t in. Then, in that case, he wanted the lady who hit him to give him a couple of dollars. Well, R’Letta happened to be there and ran him off with, "I didn’t hit you! You hit me!"

He ran out the door and hasn’t been back. We still see him riding around. He doesn’t seem as wobbly. Either he got his head straightened out by smashing it or he was wobbly the other way too and it looks as though he’s straight.

Now we call him Dent Head