small moments

1. A moment on a Southwest flight from Chicago to San Jose via Las Vegas (where we landed but were not allowed to de-plane, sorry Louie). A man a couple rows in front of me--older, stocky, weathered face, gray bushy beard, t-shirt, tan shorts, permanently furrowed brow--like someone who's spent too much time in the desert--had kicked off his sandals to relax during the flight. He got up to go to the bathroom in his bare feet and returned trailing a long sheet of toilet paper down the aisle, attached to his foot. We all stared in awe. He was completely unaware until a lady walking down the aisle took mercy on him.



2. A moment riding the Brown Line back to the office from the Loop. I saw an elementary school playground that had recently been demolished. The Bobcat was still mired in the mud along with the remnants of the play structures. It was drizzling. A bunch of kindergartners with their teacher were pressed up against the wooden fence, peering through slats in the board and wondering at the destruction. It reminds me of when they destroyed the great old wooden-and-chain-link playground at my elementary school and replaced it with the rubberized safe bullshit kind. Safety takes all the fun out of it.



3. A moment on the Vegas->San Jose leg of the same flight, when I suddenly realized that I was talking rudimentary particle physics with the cute Ph.D. student next to me. And they say EE isn't good for anything.