The sign of the cross

Ok so this is something I've never seen before. I'm in this coffee shop near Ivar and Cahuenga (I'm starting to sound like a local right??) and I see this dude with a black cross on his forehead. Were he the only one I'd seen with this adornment that day, I'd have thought nothing of it but my mind immediately swung back to the south east Asian girl I'd seen in the lift earlier.

The twilight zone music started playing in my head. What the hell was this? I nudged my buddy for the day, Will. 'Nonchalant, nonchalant' I hissed (before I remembered he'd probably never seen a single episode of Only Fools and Horses let along that specific one). 'What's with the black crosses, dude?' I was now behaving like we were the last sane humans in an insane, post-apocalyptic world.

He screwed up his face and looked at like I'd just beamed down from planet Dufus. 'It's Ash Wednesday'.

He started talking to himself about how he was going to give up red meat... Or something but I didn't really catch what he was saying because I was lost in my own thoughts. Really? People feels the need to mark themselves because they had a pancake yesterday? I started to think about the things that I could give up for Lent. I don't eat a lot of meat, I don't drink coffee, I'm definitely not giving up booze, I don't smoke and you have to be having sex to give it up. Lord knows I'd love to be in a position to be declining it. Then it struck me. I'm going to give up worrying. I'm one of life's eternal worriers. I'm gonna try it. Just for 40 days and see what happens. Worrying is a bullshit emotion anyway. It's just unexpressed concern for something that hasn't even happened and probably won't. Yeah, I can give that up for five weeks.