Something off kilter out there

The dry leaves were falling from the trees at a faster rate and the outside temperature was at least 70 degrees and climbing when I walked out of my front door in the morning. I startled a large, ragged hawk from a treetop and wondered if it had killed the rabbit I was talking to for awhile there at dusk. When I spoke to it, the rabbit stopped and seemed to be listening to me. This happened several times. I haven't seen it lately. I went out to the mall and noticed an increased police presence. There was a shooting at the local college the night before that resulted in the cancellation of all homecoming activities this weekend. The mall annoyed me. I had the strange experience of not knowing what most of the things I was looking at in the stores were. There was a wall covered in band t-shirts, and I recognized less than half of them. I found the costume number-one-son was looking for, purchased it, and delivered it. I got to hang out for a couple of hours with number-two-son before he had to go to work. He's pretty sure scratch tickets are not the road to financial security and wants to learn about mutual funds. I drove home later and talked myself out of going for a run because it was dark so I went out for Mexican food instead in this town that's felt wrong to me, in my stomach, since childhood. There was a trump parade there a couple of years ago. I sat at the bar. Almost immediately the asshole sitting next to me, an older white man, leans over and makes a crack about how great it is to have a bartender who speaks English for a change. I don't know exactly what I said in response but it had some f-bombs in it, and he got the message that we were not on the same team. He turned away. What was jarring to me about it was just how automatically he assumed I was like him. Again, I seem to be getting the message to just stay home.