It’s hard to be inconspicuous when you’re hanging upside down.

I stared at the woman, probably longer than I should have, while she hung there in the little park tree by the coffee shop on 10th street looking rather defeated. I didn’t catch the whole of the interaction that took place between her and that dog walker, but I could tell by the results that it had been rather embarrassing. Then again, maybe far more embarrasses me than does the average person.

That’s probably why I never do anything interesting.

She seemed very interesting, by the contrary. Her lack of expressing any mortification at the fact she was indeed hanging by a tree that was almost too small to hang from, in the middle of the avenue, by the cafe closest to the Amtrak station— that was far too visible to ever be mistaken as a decent area to remain anonymous for any length of time— I assumed that she probably did this sort of thing a lot. How anyone gets into this situation more than once is beyond me, but if anyone ever had, it was her. Chronic ‘main-character syndrome’, I believe is what many people are calling it nowadays. In my day we simply called it delusion.

She wore a blazer, a pencil skirt, heels, she certainly didn’t look like the type of person who would be hanging by her ankles in such a small tree in the middle of the morning, and maybe that’s why I couldn’t help but look. She seemed so utterly normal in appearance— apart from being upside down, of course— that it genuinely stumped me.

She almost seemed to not expect anyone to help her, as well, that alone was also making her a spectacle far too strange to look away from.

I stared for another moment. She slowly rotated in the tree, unintentionally adding so much to the absurdity of her situation. I almost laughed, but the more I thought about it, none of it was actually funny, just absurd.

I stood up from my table, and walked past the woman to throw my paper cup in the trash behind this woman indisposed. It was the first time I’d taken my eyes off her in what felt like thirty minutes but was probably closer to one, I couldn’t help myself, I looked at her again. She looked at me.

“Little help?” She asked, I nodded and took her hand. Eventually we got her out of that tree and she straightened herself out. She looked at me gratefully. “Thank you, I’m Melissa.” She said with a smile. I smiled back, but I didn’t tell her my name.

I’m not getting caught up in Melissa’s loony-tunes-ass shit.

Thats probably why I never do anything interesting.