He asked me, “What is the saddest sight you’ve ever seen?”

I replied, “Underneath the overpass I saw a skydancer. A Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man. A jolly solid red was his fabric, and great yellow block letters down his body proclaimed NOW LEASING. His painted face wore an eternal laugh. He was flopping and flailing carelessly in the wind, air currents rippling up through his tubes in a maniacal dance. But there among the broken TV sets and weed-choked fences and graffiti it was clear he was destined for the landfill.

“I don’t know how he was still dancing. Someone must have taken pity on him and hooked him up to a power source, giving him a second chance at life, but it was a shadow life, a cruel mockery of life. And the overpass was high, but not high enough for great Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Men like he was, so with every feeble rush of air his face would thwack against the concrete. Thwack, thwack, thwack. Thwacking his silly head on the bottom of that silly bridge, forever.

“That night I broke down crying.”

He left without picking up the tab.