gabedouglas

I was in the library, trying to get a library card yesterday during my lunch break.
I noticed that the steps were numbered, both in english and spanish. The alphabet ran down the other side of the stairs (for when you walked down). Inside the library there were purple decal feet that let to somewhere I would imagine to be a little kid’s reading nook of some sort.

And I was waiting in line at the Service Desk, a little kid started out from the path of purple feet.
His strides were 2-3 times shorter than that of the desired length to go foot for foot with the path and he haphazardly tried to stutter step into the right stride to get it right, but not between every pair of feet. His eyes would never leave the trail of prints, but his mind would.
You could barely see it. But his little feet would drift between prints and he wouldn’t care or try to correct himself. Three feet later he might, but sometimes his mind would be off.
“Mom, if you were an octopus..,” he asked, his eyes never leaving these mysterious marks on the floor.
“If you were an octopus, would you talk to me?”
Enter Bohemian-type mom holding his little sister. She was what I think of as Bohemian, which could be completely off. She wore flowing materials, a knitted hat, and clangy jewelry.
It worked for her. And as she looked up to see people wondering what the answer was the same as her son, she smiled and looked confident and unembarrassed. You could see her actually trying to render the right answer.
“Yes, yes I would,” she replied.
“What would you say?”
“Mom, if you were an octopus, what would you say..”

“Well, I’d say.. ‘hey come swim! it’s really fun in the water.’”
And his glance went up to mom, to make sure she was actually talk to him.
The glance up made him content and he went back to trying to envisioning who left these purple marks on the floor.
“Mom.. mom, if you were an octopus.. would you sing to me?”

“Yes, yes of course I would. We’d sing together.”

As they left the library into the annex of the building, I almost swayed right out the door with them. I wanted to see what they’d sing, the octopus and him.

But the librarian waved me forward and told me I had to have a piece of mail with my address on it.

Another roaring success for brewfests.
I decided against the enormous pre-game rituals I had previously done because I wanted to last the entire night. I picked up a young man in the Cloquet area, a Mr. Robertson, as the kids call him.
We got blasted for 4 hours, sang ‘A Boy Named Sue’, had people whisper ‘there goes Johnny Cash’ for the rest of it. Then onwards to VIP for the post-brewfest pizzas and pitchers of Premo. Then onto the Tower strip for a bit, then over to the NEW tap room (the old 21 North) to see Natalie play with GB Leighton. Then walk back to the brother’s house.
Nice.