There's a new kid on the block...

… and they have a sharpie.

I like street art. Although I appreciate the well crafted ones the most, I often find myself fascinated with sophomoric dauberies or other ridiculous things that probably weren’t even meant to be art. A few weeks ago I walked by a torn-down poster and stopped because of the scrawl on it.

Who are those controlling shitheads that force someone to talk and smile? I couldn’t help but imagine the author to be an emo kid who time-traveled from the 2000s.

I continued my walk and by the end of it, I had already forgotten this rather short-lived distraction. It wasn’t until last Saturday that I realized this kid had more to say. As I entered the park around the corner, I spotted familiar words on a pole.

Maybe I got it wrong and it wasn’t the shitheads who were forcing people to talk and smile. Maybe this individual was controlling the shitheads. With that thought on my mind, I dropped the dog poop bag into the nearest trash can, only to find the same handwriting on the side of it.

If there’s one thing I’ve gotten by now, it’s that it’s incredibly important for that person to have control over when they smile. But is there more to it? Wondering how many more pieces I would find, I went on a little scavenger hunt. Luckily, I didn’t have to search for long, as the next one was right on the next trash can in the park.

I mean, I get the connection between balance and the Yin and Yang symbol, but what does the Star of David have to do with it? Things got weirder when I left the park and encountered the next one in one of the surrounding streets.

I guess I didn’t get a memo or something. I tried finding more pieces of the puzzle, but I couldn’t spot any for the rest of my walk. I walked back home and when I reached the corner of my street, there was one last gem on a trash can.

I’m not sure I’d call this ability superhuman, but this is probably the closest we can get to agree on. In the following days, whenever I went somewhere around the neighborhood, I kept an eye out for more, but so far I’ve had no luck. Maybe they’ve gotten their message out and there is nothing more to say. Or maybe the sharpie has dried up. I’ll probably never find out.