Watermelon killer, car counter

Today's agenda:

1.) COUNT ALL THE RED CARS THAT GO BY IN HALF AN HOUR, submitted by David Greenberger, of Duplex Planet.

2.) PASS OUT FREE WATERMELON TO PEOPLE WALKING BY, submitted by Todd, the only other person in the theater when I saw _Napoleon Dynamite_.

Originally, I planned on doing both at the same time, but the watermelon is hard to manage, even before it's cut up, so I can that idea. I buy the watermelon on the way to lunch at Tom's restaurant in Prospect Heights. I sit it across from me at the table, which the waiters think is hilarious. I get apple pancakes. The waiter wants to know what the watermelon wants. He brings a glass of water for it. "Water for a watermelon!," he jokes, and we both laugh like fools. I planned horribly for the watermelon. I didn't bring anything to cut it with and nothing to serve it on. I finagle a plastic knife from a guy at a bodega, but I have to buy some lemonheads to get it. I get the watermelon over to a good corner on Underhill near two public schools with playgrounds, so I think people will come by. Sure enough some kids come over to see what I'm doing. I offer them some watermelon. One of them says, "we got to ask". They run off. In a couple minutes I see them coming around the corner with two women. The women don't look especially happy. At that moment, I remember that there was some kind of bacterial food poisoning outbreak at a school in the midwest that was traced back to unwashed watermelon. I didn't wash my watermelon. In fact, I somehow got cinnamon butter on it at Tom's. I start to sweat. I can see the cover of the Post: "WATERMELON KILLER TARGETED CHILDREN". Or "BROOKLYN TEACHER GETS AN 'A' IN MURDER". And then the kids' Moms are there. "What are you doing?", one of them asks. She's not angry, but she's far from happy. "Do you live around here?" I stammer that I live close to there. I tell them that I'm on my way home from Tom's, which seems to put them at ease a bit, since everyone in the neighborhood knows and loves Gus. Then, ridiculously, I add, "Watermelon really has a lot of water in it". One of the moms says, "Hunh." It's clear they don't want their kids eating my watermelon. The little girl, about four, has been winding herself around her legs while I talk. She kisses my knee. The moms don't tell her to stop; in fact, they do seem even more at ease. Kids have a good sense of who to trust. We talk about schools, teachers, watermelon, sunburns, garbage collection, car alarms and anxious children. The kids and I talk about soda, the summer, and I tell them a little bit about what it was like to be a kid in Wisconsin. One of the boys in the group of kids asks if I want to ride his bike. I look at the Moms. The laugh, and the one that I assume is the mom of that kid says, "Honey, if you can fit on it, you can ride it." I can't fit on it. Well, I can, but it creaks in an about-to-fall-apart way and my knees jut way up into the air when I peddle, like a clown bike. But it's SO fun. I leave the kids listening to my ipod and ride down to the next block and back. There's something about riding a bike when you're a kid that you can never quite get back again as a grownup, but this is so close. When I get back, one of the moms has bought three coronas in the bodega. She holds one out to me. "Could we get in trouble for just drinking these out on the sidewalk?" I want to know. They laugh at me, "No one is gonna care!". I try to pay them for the beer, but they won't let me.

I try to give some watermelon to squirrels, but they ignore it. So I eat a huge piece by myself and throw the rest away. My fingers keep sticking to my ipod on the way home.

I walk back over to Park Slope to count red cars, on President Street. A woman comes out on her stoop to ask if I'm OK. I tell her I'm counting red cars and she says, "They say people that drive red cars tend to speed" and goes back inside her house. It's a quiet block. In 30 minutes, only six red cars go by. I wave at each one of them.