i_remember_you raze i met him the day i slipped on a patch of black ice and almost broke my neck. it wasn't one of those slips where you have a chance at catching yourself, where your feet go out from under you and you fall back. i went up and all over the place. it was going to be bad. in some miraculous accident of gravity and untrained elegance, i did something resembling a triple lutz and made a perfect landing. i couldn't have repeated it if i tried. it was one of my finest moments. it was right up there with the time i was crossing the street and had a split second to throw my body onto the patch of grass in front of a tim hortons and out of the way of a car that was heading right for me after running a red light. or the time i caught the toe of my shoe on the edge of a tree grate and did an unplanned front somersault while carrying a can of dr. pepper and landed in a seated position without spilling a drop. and no one was around to see it. a minute or two after i became for one brief moment the greatest amateur figure skater never to lace up a pair of skates, i saw this tall, lanky man walking toward me and smiling. "it's good to see you," he said. he didn't look familiar to me. but we were the only two people on the block, and i didn't want to be rude, so i stopped to talk to him. he had grey hair and a friendly, pockmarked face. he said he used to be a cop. he said he would visit grade schools and talk to the kids. from the time i entered daycare until the day i started high school, i grew through looking like thirty different people. i have the pictures to prove it. the person i was now at fourteen didn't look like any of the thirty i'd been before. but he convinced me. maybe he did come to my school when i was a kid. maybe he remembered a face that wasn't mine anymore and saw some echo of it in the face i had now. he even looked like a retired cop. the kind of cop who'd make you feel safe if you saw him walking the beat, back when safe was a feeling a person in a uniform could give you. he had a great handshake. we had a nice little conversation. then we went our separate ways. the next time i saw him i was eighteen. i was busking downtown with kiwi and anna. i didn't want to go, but kiwi thought we could make some money, so i played acoustic guitar hoping no one could hear me and he whacked a djembe and anna played violin and smiled. no one tipped us anything. no one paid any attention to us. we were walking around when i heard someone say, "it's good to see you." i looked up and saw it was the friendly cop. only now he wasn't a cop at all. he was just an old man with a dirty face and a green t-shirt. he said he saw me on television. that was his opener this time. and even that was possible. when i was still in high school, my drama class acted out a skit that parodied the movie "chocolat" for some local news program. we were on tv. i programmed my vcr to record our spot. when we were back at school and everyone was wishing they could see what they looked like on camera, i walked the two minutes it took me to get home and brought the tape back to drama class, and there we were. there was max saying he was going to give up chocolate for lent, and there i was saying, "but jean-michel, you change every day!" "fuck this guy," kiwi said. "he doesn't know you. he's just some homeless guy looking for money." he said it right in front of him. didn't even try to hide how disgusted he was. this was my friend the cop who remembered me from when i was a kid. maybe he thought i was someone else now, but he still knew me. so i shook his hand and i told him it was good to see him too. he didn't ask me for money. he didn't want that. all he wanted was to tell people he remembered them, maybe hoping someday one of the people he remembered wouldn't be a stranger and they would tell him who he used to be. i always wondered who i was going to be to him the next time i saw him. but i didn't see him again. and now kiwi is a great armchair activist, shouting to anyone who'll listen about how the world is going to hell and how he's one of the good guys because he can see through it all, celebrating his moral superiority when he was once the very thing he claims to hate. he mouthed off to a real cop once and got punched in the face. my cop wouldn't have done that to him. he would have told him where he remembered him from. and even if it was a lie, his smile would have made him believe it was true. 210716 what's it to you? who go blather from