"HOW YA DOIN?"

On my 11:30pm walk before, some guy passed me on my street...a young guy...Latino of some kind, to be exact, lol...talking on his cell...and I was in the middle of my knee-jerk "I'm gonna casually avoid acknowledging this other human is walking past me at 11:30pm on an otherwise quiet street" thing, when he barks out "HOW YA DOIN?" to me...in the middle of his animated cell call. I was startled, made quick eye contact, muttered something like "hey, what's up?" and continued on. I kept turning around, seeing if he turned into a house on my street, wondering if he was a familiar face i'd somehow not remembered. I'm good with faces, you know. He never entered a house, though. So here I am, more than an hour later, musing on the fact that a total stranger said hello to me IN THE MIDDLE OF A PHONECALL, simply because he passed me on the street late at night. Just like they're supposed to in Mayberry, USA. And yet, I'm thrown by it, my urban guard always being up. Hell, even in rural settings, i'd find it odd. I think there's very specific settings where you say hello to a stranger...like on a nature trail, as I experienced just last month in the meadowlands. I very clearly recall saying hello with a smile to a woman passing by on the rocky trail. Yet I ignored a couple men. Guess it's situational. But an urban street? Yes, i'm obsessing. Bottom line...it was nice. I LIKE that this stranger took note of my existence passing him on a sublime super-late-summer night. My fellow man...a moment in time...hello...goodbye. Manners AREN'T dead.