4:30 a.m.

A couple years ago I used to work in a coffee shop that opened early. I’d have to leave my apartment at 4:30 to open the store.

Since I didn’t have a car, public transit didn’t run early enough, and I was too poor to take a cab, I had one option left, walking.

I’d walk from Osborne Village to Portage and Main. I know you’re thinking, "damn that’s super sketchy." I thought it would be too, but it wasn’t bad.

For the most part, I didn’t see anyone. The things I did see though were weird, funny, and borderline terrifying.

 Sometimes I saw a woman jogging, and she’d yell/sing Eye of the Tiger. I consider it a particularly good rendition coming from someone gasping for breath. I have a feeling she’d start when I came into view, but part of me wants to believe that’s just what she does.  

I only saw Wolf Man twice, but that was enough. I'd walk over the Osborne Bridge, and hear a wolf call. I looked off the edge of the bridge and there was a man standing calf deep in the river, howling at the moon. I saw him again a few months after that. Admittedly I was scared at the time, but now I think he’s amazing.  

Do you know those huge awful bugs that hang out in concrete areas? I think they might be June bugs. I tried looking them up on Google, but the pictures made me feel like they were going to crawl out of my couch so I stopped.

Here is a brief description: 

• Awful 
• About 2 inches 
• Brown or maybe grey
• Hangs out in the dark 

Anyway, one time—not while I was walking to work—I saw a woman outside of the Toad. Upon seeing one of those bugs she yelled “is this real life?”

The day I stepped on one while walking to work, I asked myself the same question. Before I looked down to see what happened I knew, and that's the worst thing that happened walking from Osborne Village to Portage and Main at 4:30 a.m.