Sometimes strangers don’t get stabbed in the street

During the summer, I drip with sweat to the extent that people have asked me if I had just… During the summer, I drip with sweat to the extent that people have asked me if I had just gone swimming. I smell like a yak not 25 minutes departed from the shower.

I don’t deal well with the heat, and, as a result, Naked Time tends to start a few minutes through the door of my apartment.

Imagine the inconvenience: one day, seven or eight minutes after going “Showgirls,” the doorbell rings.

I dress, go down two flights of stairs and open the door, only to find a man and a woman, both about 45, who are wholly unfamiliar. It’s their 20th anniversary, I soon learn, and part of their celebration entails a visit to their stomping grounds from when they were just starting out. And those grounds included my current apartment.

I invited them up to my place, which is neat and tidy insofar as I have separate piles for empty beer cans and underwear. I’m still not sure why I was more embarrassed about the mess than worried for my safety.

Maybe it’s because they were in love, or because they were former Pitt folk, or just the fact that they were reserved and diminutive – and, therefore, wholly unintimidating.

What matters is that there was a moment of trust, wherein I let total strangers wade through my filth. And now they have a picture of them together, my debris in the background, and, somehow, that seems a little more romantic to me than if, say, the picture were taken in front of Niagara Falls. The American side, of course; Canada is much more romantic, because you can drink in Canada when you’re 18.

There’s also a picture of me, with my arm over the woman’s shoulder, taken in front of the open door to my bathroom, which, they told me, still bore the same tiling that it had two decades ago. For a moment, I was glad that, in lieu of actually picking up underwear, I had used Elmer’s glue to reaffix the loose tiles.

Other nostalgic spots, they told me, included his favorite spot for studying at Hillman Library. While on the subject, the woman told me she understood the mess; after all, the apartment had not been clean when it had been theirs. There was too much studying to be done.

“Of course,” I said, pretending I could relate.

Four years of experience at Pitt demanded that I ask them whether the first floor doors to Hillman had been open twenty years ago. They laughed, which indicated that the answer was, “No,” long before they said so.

A friend to whom I related the story said that it “kind of restores your faith in humanity.” It was refreshing to meet people unafraid to share a bit of themselves with a total stranger, and to find that I had the capability of doing the same.

How touching.

So I had a sweet moment with some total strangers.

I also realized something, which is terribly obvious: When you hear something along the lines of “50 percent of all marriages in America end in divorce,” it also means that 50 percent are successful. And besides, while many divorces are regrettable, some happen to celebrities – mostly Liz Taylor – and still others are blessings.

As copy chief for The Pitt News, my job entails reading all the news in the paper. And one thing becomes clear: we have yet to run a story about someone who walks down the street and doesn’t get stabbed. Nor do we hear about the millions upon millions of Muslim men, ages 18 to 40, who have never committed an act of terrorism. It’s not news. Nor is a successful marriage.

As you read our paper, hopefully every day it’s printed, keep in mind the fact that our job, like that of any news source, is to report the unusual. The stuff that doesn’t happen every day. When you realize that, you might infer that the stuff that does happen every day is largely either good or indifferent.

We are surrounded by the same sort of pessimism that notes if gas prices have gone up again, but not the fact that gas prices have a long way to go before they are as exorbitant as, say, bottled water, which is much more expensive by the gallon. Of course, if people took real notice of how much water actually costs, we might have to declare war on Poland Spring.

To keep it short, the good news is not frequently in our newspaper, or, for that matter, any other source of news.

Many of you will be familiar with the cynical adage about journalism, “If it bleeds, it leads.” While I can’t say that that will be untrue as regards our newspaper, we, at least, are not exploiting tragedy to sell papers. We don’t sell papers.

For most of you, any newspaper will be largely about strangers, except for the police blotter, which will feature you and everyone you know.

And, with all those bad things happening to strangers, it’s nice to know about a wonderful thing quietly happening to someone you never knew.

Marty Flaherty will not necessarily let you into his apartment. But you can e-mail him at mflaherty@pittnews.com. It’s less messy.