A Bird in the Hand

PART I

Pickpockets are the world’s best sociologist and psychologist. They know exactly how to read people, whether individually or in groups according to their actions, ethnicity, the clothes they are wearing and whatever other visual clues they get from a person’s appearance. They have to have this precise understanding, of course, because they make a living off of it. Essentially, they get paid on commission for being experts in the field of other people’s obliviousness.

If there is one thing to know about pickpockets, it’s that they are always looking. They are looking for weak spots, time warps when one person’s attention has fallen momentarily into a black hole, where they can slip in and out in a second and instantaneously extract the most important paper and plastic components of your life from wherever you have them stashed and then swiftly disappear into the surrounding fabric of conventional space and time.

Sunday morning. Madrid metro station. Pockets are loaded with cash for perusing the weekly open market. Ripe for the picking. Supremely juicy. Having warned them about Madrid’s notorious purse and wallet disappearing acts, my mother and my aunt stand conversing without suspicion or worry as the thin subway crowd seems relatively relaxed and unthreatening. I, however, didn’t engage myself in the conversation and, instead, scan the people around us. I come across the gaze of an ordinary-looking, young man doing the same thing: scanning. I watch him, see him give my mom and aunt the “once over” and then make a comment, rather inconspicuously, to an older gentleman who passes by him. My little antennas go up.

When the train arrives, the two get on separately. I see the younger man go to the far end of the car while the older man plants himself rather snuggly beside my mother. My little radar starts buzzing. I instinctively grab my mom’s purse which is hanging by her side and WHAM! Catch of the day, I am holding, rather un-amorously, hands with a pickpocket!

Now, very rarely do I reach my rage threshold, but, with the right combination of fear, surprise, and frusteration, I have found that I can create enough adrenaline to issue forth lasers from my eyeballs and fire from my mouth.
I looked at the man with wild eyes and scream “F%*# OFF!!!” (still clutching the man’s hand) then acusedly, “What did you steal!!! What did you steal!!!”
He looks at me, completely bewildered, I am sure, by the elf-like girl about to pierce the skin on his knuckles with her little claws and quickly retracts his hand before running away to the other side of the subway car.

Needless to say, nothing was stolen.


PART II


The Common Swift is the most aerial species of bird in the world. It eats drinks, sleeps and mates in the air. It never deliberately lands on a horizontal surface. Its wingspan and its short legs make it nearly impossible for the Swift to take off from the ground and I’ve been told that if ever to find one on the ground, I should toss it up to give is some air under its wings so it can fly.

Unexpectedly, I found one on the ground. She was on her back, awkwardly struggling to right herself. So I picked her up, wished her well and launched her into the air. She fluttered successfully for a moment and then crashed. I picked her up again and looked at her wings. One wing was not quite right. So, I held her. I kept her close, put her in a shoebox and optimistically did my best to feed her and give her water throughout the day.

But as evening fell, the sky-scraping cries of the swifts outside awakened her anxiety. I realized that I couldn’t keep the poor thing in a box and I knew that without the ability to fly, she was deprived of all things vital and I knew I had to let her go. I decided the best place to leave her was close to the cliffs where she would have joined the other birds if she could fly. So, up the mountain we went. Found a grassy knoll and that’s where I left her. I know she didn’t survive, but I am reminded of my little friend every morning and evening as the Swifts take to the air, their fast jet bodies with their chevron wings sewing wide loops in and out of the peripheries of the plaza.