The guy who sweeps the floor appears cool to me.  He’s well-dressed, neat, good-looking.  But when he sits in the barber’s chair next to mine I have the sense that a puppy has come close for protection, and I start to talk with him.  

It’s a problem for me because I’m not good at small talk and I have a tendency to move in too close for comfort.  He has a tattoo on his arm that says “to be or not to be.”  I ask him what it means, and he says,  it’s Shakespeare, so, always an english teacher, I ask, but what does it mean.  He says “to decide whether to join the world or stay inside your head.”

i think he got up and went somewhere else at that point and left me thinking this guy has got a serious case of PTSD.

Then I had the best haircut in years and was so happy I forgot to say goodbye to him.  

How could part of the country be so thrilled in coming back to normality when so many are so damaged by the war?