Driving down a dirt road north of Phoenix, just before dusk;

I saw him running, the man, with cleft chin thrust grimly forward, elbows swinging high and fists forward into uppercuts.

He was in his late 50's/early 60's, with the look of someone who might've once been a captain of industry.

His strides, too, were exaggerated, as if bounding but without much bounce.

In fact, he looked more like a man imitating a superhero (the Flash maybe?) then someone actually running and I slowed to catch his eye as I drove past, expecting to see a little sparkle there, hinting at the performance he was putting on.

Instead, he seemed to be within himself - with a glassy-eyed, vacant stare that belied his physical hyperbole.

"Hunh," I thought to myself, and drove on.

A few days later I found myself out with the boys, tearing up the night (read: too many drinks and too few credit cards - still haven't found that last one!) until we wound our way to Crescent Ballroom, and myself, joined by LB, out on the dance floor.

There was a young woman DJ spinning and I soon approached to challenge and beguile her with my wisdom, insight, and diverse musical knowledge:*

"Got any Devo?" I asked.

"That was Devo," she retorted.

Which didn't make any sense, 'cause it hadn't been - but the club was loud and either of us might've misheard so I forged on, trying to rejoin with a request for "The Specials" - at which point, she rolls her eyes, cuts me off mid-sentence, and says:

"I'm gonna play what I'm gonna play."

The record didn't come to a screeching halt, but man it felt like that.

And I thought of the guy running down the dirt road.

What I'd thought had been a playful gesture, had been called out as self-important grandiosity. And irrelevant.

I turned, and with that just-kicked-in-the-nuts feeling, left the DJ's area.

Went back to the table, drank half a beer, got fully distracted, then 2 minutes later, LB and I were out on the dance floor, cuttin' it up.

The good news?

1. The DJ didn't suck.
2. The flipside to being old (and maybe a few sheets in the wind) is that sh*t rolls pretty easily off your shoulders.

We danced the night away, and it was… delightful - irrelevance be damned!

Now if I can just find that debit card.