Part of yesterday’s festivities included the sighting of a certain man wearing an empress Empire waisted dress as a jacket over a tutu; he had a long beard, sported a hat that resembled a dandelion puff constructed of dirty rags, and carried numerous shopping bags that, one speculated, contained further fashion triumphs. “I’m craaaaazy!” he announced to those assembled.

“Which means he isn’t,” said my luncheon companion.

“Stop screaming!” the man barked at the children in a nearby playground. “I hate screaming!”

“That statement is ironic,” said my luncheon companion.

“Given that he’s screaming, himself?”

“Hmm, I suppose it was more like yelling.”

The craaaaazy man began a conversation with a nearby woman about what brand of yogurt she was eating, and she engaged him without batting an eye, as if he were the sort of interlocutor she encountered every day.

My luncheon companion and I walked along the park and then away from it, down the avenue toward his workplace. As we bid each other farewell at the door, a black man in a sweatshirt introduced himself. “I’m a homeless comedian,” he said. He was carrying half a danish on a napkin. “I will tell you jokes. That’s how I support myself.”

“Oh dear.”

“What do you call a white man surrounded by a hundred black men? Warden!”

He went on from there, one riddle after another—whimsically touching on prejudice, segregation, and lynching—ignoring our horrified pleas to stop. Finally, my luncheon companion gave him a dollar, and he wandered off to brighten someone else’s day.

“Goodbye,” I said.

“Goodbye,” said my luncheon companion.

And we went our separate ways.