I Asked Strangers For Random Words To Sing About — Then She Handed Me A Frozen Meal
Part 1
My fingers hovered over the plastic keys of my battered Yamaha keyboard.
The morning air in the plaza carried the harsh scent of roasted nuts and stale exhaust fumes.
I had been standing on this exact corner for three hours without a single break.
My feet ached inside my worn-out leather boots.
The tip jar held nothing but a handful of dull coins and a single crinkled dollar bill.
I cleared my throat and tapped the metal mesh of the microphone.
A sharp crackle echoed across the damp paving stones of the square.
“Give me a word,” I called out to the passing crowd.
“Any word, and I’ll give you a song.”
Most people ignored me entirely.
They kept their eyes glued to glowing screens and their earbuds firmly planted in their ears.
I didn’t blame them at all.
The city was a loud, unforgiving place.
Everyone was just trying to survive until Friday without falling apart completely.
But I needed this.
I needed the connection, however fleeting and strange it might be.
A teenager in a backwards cap finally stopped walking.
He smirked, looking around to make sure his friends were watching him.
“Quasar,” he challenged, pronouncing it like ‘kwa-zar’.
I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Why do you say it like that?”
I asked into the mic.
“I’ll never trust you if you pronounce it like quasar.”
A few people walking by chuckled at the exchange.
“What’s wrong with you?”
I sang, hitting an upbeat chord on the keyboard.
“Do you think you’re impressing me?
You’re normal.”
The teenager turned bright red and hurried away, his friends laughing loudly behind him.
I kept the rhythm going, letting the music fill the empty space in the square.
A little girl stepped up next, tugging her tired mother’s hand.
She leaned in and whispered something directly into my ear.
“Don’t ask your parents what I just heard,” I announced to the growing crowd.
“She gave me the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.”
People actually stopped to listen now, their curiosity piqued.
“It’s my favorite word,” I belted out, playing a soaring, dramatic melody.
“In fact, I’ll name my first child that word.”
The mother laughed out loud and tossed a five-dollar bill into my open guitar case.
I nodded my thanks without missing a single beat of the song.
A guy with a magnificent mane of curly hair walked past my setup.
I couldn’t resist the opportunity.
“Your hair,” I crooned softly into the microphone, switching to a slow R&B groove.
“It looks so luscious.”
He stopped, flipped his hair over his shoulder, and shot me an exaggerated wink.
Wandering from city to city, I collected random words and spun them into temporary gold.
This bizarre routine was the only thing propelling me forward.
Without the constant noise of strangers, the reality of my life would finally catch up with me.
I couldn’t bear to face the heavy silence waiting in my empty apartment.
I played a quick, jazzy song about a guy who bought a brand new TV and realized it was missing a manual.
Then I sang a country ballad about sourdough bread.
I declared that it was the most average type of bread if you measured it in centimeters.
The crowd enjoyed the absolute nonsense and slowly dispersed back into the city.
Soon, only one person remained.
She stood at the very edge of my small, invisible circle.
She wore a sharp, expensive gray suit that looked entirely out of place here on the street.
Her shoulders were rigid and drawn up defensively toward her ears.
Her eyes held a heavy, dark exhaustion that I recognized all too well.
It was the specific look of someone carrying a weight they couldn’t name or put down.
I rested my hands quietly on the plastic keys.
“You look like you need a song,” I said gently into the microphone.
She stared at me for a long moment, unblinking and perfectly still.
“Defenestration,” she said, her voice completely flat and devoid of emotion.
The act of throwing someone out of a window.
I nodded slowly and started a dark, dramatic chord progression.
“Okay, so what you’re telling me,” I sang in a rhythmic, spoken-word style.
“Is the first guy who ever got thrown out of a window was falling.”
I hit a heavy, dissonant bass note that echoed off the brick buildings.
“And he thought, ‘I’ve got the perfect word for this, and it’s defenestration.'”
I let the chord linger in the crisp morning air.
“‘It’s not called a whoopsie-doo.'”
A tiny, almost imperceptible crack appeared in her stoic, frozen expression.
“‘The ground looks so far away from here,'” I sang softly.
“‘The ground looks so distant now.'”
She shifted her weight, crossing her arms tightly across her chest as if she were freezing.
“‘You know, there’s something deep inside me I’ve always wanted to do,'” I continued.
“‘I’ve wanted to be a librarian.'”
I let the melody rise into something oddly and unexpectedly hopeful.
“‘I’ll contribute one word to society before my life ends.'”
She let out a single, sharp breath.
It wasn’t quite a genuine laugh, but it was incredibly close.
“Erudite,” she offered next, her voice slightly less brittle.
I switched immediately to a pompous, classical waltz tempo.
“Wait, what does that mean?”
I sang in a mock-opera voice.
“Erudite.”
She actually answered me this time.
“It’s just really fancy,” she murmured.
“High culture.
High-class.”
“Yes,” I sang back, trilling the keys rapidly.
“Yes, I’m a studious child, and late at night I’ll drive you.”
Her smile finally broke all the way through the heavy mask she wore.
It transformed her entire face.
The harsh, stressed lines around her mouth and eyes completely vanished.
She reached into her oversized designer leather bag.
I fully expected her to pull out her thick wallet to tip me.
Instead, she pulled out a small cardboard box she must have just bought from the corner store.
She looked me dead in the eye and handed me a frozen Hot Pocket.
