Can you Diggy it?

My roommate and I passed Sensai Pepe on our corner the other day. Sensai Pepe is a guy that hangs out on our corner a lot of the time. I can't go as far as to say he's homeless. We never seem him sleep there, and he is not there all the time. He is there enough though that we named him. Sensai Pepe got his name because sometimes he likes to teach children karate moves. Well, we only saw children once, and they were passing by, so maybe he just likes to do karate moves on the street. He's not an athletic man, actually quite large and usually disheveled, but seemingly harmless.

We've only named two people who hang out on our corner. The aforementioned Sensai Pepe and Mr. Marbles. Mr. Marbles is so named because we thought he had lost his, though he didn't seem too concerned, and he sometimes drank, so maybe he just forgot where he kept them. I say kept, because earlier this year, we lost Mr. Marbles. Through various roommate sightings, we pieced together what happened - seems he suffered a head injury. Our suspicions were confirmed when a shrine was erected at the base of the steps he hung out on. Large vodka bottles doubled as vases and Puerto Rican flags and Virgin Marys paid homage to a man named Pedro. Turns out Mr. Marbles had a name.

The whole thing was oddly touching. We didn't know him, but he was a part of our lives for the whole time we have lived here. It made me think about a man who lived in my little hometown when I was growing up - someone else we had all given a name to.

I guess every city has people that don't have anywhere to go. In Port Allen, LA, we had Diggy Doo. I don't remember a whole lot about Diggy Doo, I just know we passed him on the way to and from school on Jefferson Avenue. I seem to remember him shuffling from one end of town to the other, with nowhere really to settle - Port Allen has no stoops, and in the South I'm sure his loitering would have seemed a nuisance. I think he was pretty harmless and everyone knew him or of him, even if they didn't speak to him.

As a kid, i thought he had a funny name. I think sometimes we give people names, or make them characters because it makes them less scary. They become characters in our lives. I will always remember Sensai Pepe and Mr. Marbles and Diggy Doo, perhaps because they DO have names.

I sit here wondering what Diggy Doo's real name was, and how many people knew it. I don't think it was Pedro, but I'm sure it was nice, and I hope more people called him by it than Diggy Doo.