I’ve been driving back and forth to work along the same route for the past 15 years now (well, I try to take the train one day a week, although it involves a bit of a hike). Yea, mine is not exactly a life of high adventure. I go back and forth repetitiously, almost to the exact same minute each day. Over time, I’ve built up with a list of people to look out for, people that I regularly see along the way. They may be out jogging or power walking or slow walking or waiting for a bus. I have no idea who they are, so I give them fake names. Some of them, anyway.

One of my named characters is Ms. Cheerios. She’s just a middle aged suburbanite out doing some exercise-walking in the early AM. She used to wear a yellow Cheerios T-shirt. The T-shirt is now gone, but Ms. Cheerios is still out there most days, even on the colder and darker mornings. Give her credit for persistence.

Then there’s Grete the Great. Grete is a jogger, and she looks to be a darn serious one. She’s tall and muscular with pulled-back blond hair. She’s frequently out there at 7 am getting in her mileage. She obviously reminds me of Grete Waitz, the 7 time New York Marathon winner from Norway. I always see Grete running in the same direction as I’m driving (Ms. Cheerios, by contrast, is always walking in the opposite direction). During the summer months I sometimes spy her in my rear view mirror wearing sunglasses; that makes me think of her as “terminator-Grete” or “cyber-Grete”, especially when she has the pulse monitor around her arm.

Next, there’s Mr. Squiggleroom. “Squiggie” is an older black fellow who is a devoted power walker. He’s extremely disciplined in his motions, and it seems to keep him in good shape. I got the name for him while watching a tire commercial praising the virtues of a certain brand in its ability to absorb “road-squiggle”. To make the point, the ad showed a group of guys in a power walk race. Thus the inspiration for Mr. Squiggleroom. He was quite a regular there for a long time, at least 5 years (going in the opposite direction to me each day, same as Ms. Cheerios). Then I stopped seeing him late last year. But for the past couple of weeks he’s made a comeback. And that does my heart good.

There are a couple of other guys here and there that I recognize. One guy is frequently out running in the morning, but he never seems to be enjoying it. I think of him as Mr. Suffering. His face is always tilted a bit, looking as though he’s barely gonna make it (and he isn’t all that old either). Then there’s John, an afternoon walker (most of my clientele are seen in the AM). John is somewhat stocky and reminds me of an insurance consultant named John Wilson, who I remember from my days with the National Council of Comp Insurance.

The above characters have been perennials; they’ve been around for at least 5 years or so. But aside from them, there are a handful of others who came and went, who never stayed long enough to get a name. There was the tall, skinny Catholic high school girl at the bus stop near Roseville Avenue in Newark. Last I saw, she seemed to have a boyfriend. Then there’s the old guy from my former barbershop, who I sometimes see right after I pull out of my driveway (I haven’t gone there since I went bald, with the help of a triple razor). And a couple of years back there was a tall, blondish, somewhat vintage woman who I often saw walking into a laundromat in Bloomfield wearing high heels and a skirt cut somewhat above her knees. Every morning at 7. Don’t know what happened to her after the laundromat burned down.

Well, this is just what the mind does when it isn’t properly stimulated. It slides off into fantasy land. It finds its own little world to get interested in. And it’s just as well that we never discover the truth about the objects of our little fantasies. What if Grete the Great’s real name is Nancy or Rosemarie? What if Mr. Squiggleroom is really Robert? And Ms. Cheerios — oh, let’s not even get into that. To me they’ll always be my little fantasy team.