Sorry, but life is good

I feel a little guilty, seeing as the last post on this blog was dated almost a month ago. I'm not sure where the source of this guilt lies, since my weekly update continues to report a grand total of 2 visitors a week. But the guilt remains. Must be my upbringing. What can I say? Things are going pretty good. I can't even think of any piddling little detail I can exacerbate for the purpose of amusing my 2 readers.

I guess I could tell a story. Let's see... It can't have too many personal details. Some people are already getting a little too close. I know, I'll tell you about the time I got lost at a Mennonite Quilt Auction. It was a blustery Autumn day in October, somewhere in the Midwest, and I was tightly wrapped in my jean jacket with waaaay too many pockets. Man, the crap I used to carry around in that thing is incredible. It was all so stereotypically little boy too. Half a yo-yo, a super bouncy ball, some double-bubble (I can't stand it now, but I used to love that stuff), an odd bit of steel I had found on the ground that vaguely resembled something that could potentially come in handy. I was very much a pack rat back then.

Anywho, we were wandering around what I guess were fairgrounds, taking in all the sights and sounds of a bustling rural community. It was a Saturday, so the crowds were out in force. We all stuck close to one another and made our way to the main stage to see what was being proffered. It was a very interesting experience to see/hear my first auctioneer. There were so many assumptions about them being barrel-chested old men with thick handlebar moustaches bellowing out across a crowded room with a torrent of words so fast that it seemed like a foreign language.

Let me tell you, this guy did not disappoint. He was a little more barrel-shaped around the midsection than the chest, and his moustache was a little scrawnier and salt-and-peppered than I expected, but man did he spew forth with a steady stream of-well, I'm not entirely sure I am qualified to say what was coming out of his mouth. In the hopes of propriety I can only assume it was bids being placed, but to be honest he could have been cursing out my mother for all I know.

Despite the intrigue at this new and exciting experience, my siblings and I soon grew bored with the ever-rotating display of quilts. So to stave off the mischief that typically accompanies such boredom, ma and pa decided to do a little more wandering (read:wear out the little ones with excessive walking) before settling in to begin their bidding.

We had no sooner left the small stadium where they were doing the auctioning, when we came across some sort of penny display. This was great for me since just a few months prior I had begun what would be a life-long obsession with coin collecting. So I paused there briefly to see what they were up to. Unfortunately, I was the only one who paused.

Let me set the stage for you here. There were thousands of people at this small event. Got it? No, but seriously, there were hoards of people, moving very quickly from event to event. It reminds me of traffic on L.A. roads, as well as some of the big cities in Texas, where you are about 4 1/2 ft away from the car in front of you going 80 miles an hour. It's not really like the traffic in New York, cuz that's pretty much just at a standstill all the time.

So I look up from the penny trough, assuming that my big brother will be blocking my path and I'm surprised to find my path clear. Like, completely. As in there were only a handful of people left in the area of this booth. And none of them were related to me. This display was set up in the entrance to the auction building, so I rushed outside to try and catch sight of my clan. But they were nowhere to be found.

Not one to panic, I quickly reassured myself that I had heard which displays in which building my mom had planned to visit, so I could just head in that direction and catch-up to them there. It never occurred to my 8-yr old mind that they would actually notice being short one child and return to the last spot they had seen him. So I spent the better part of an hour wandering the fairgrounds searching for my family, with nothing but half a yo-yo for company.

At some point I had the brilliant idea that I could just head to the car, since at some point they would have to leave (if they hadn't already) and so the best place to be would be by their only means of transportation. It just so happened that the car was quite a ways away, which meant I was out of earshot of the announcements over the PA system they had started to make thanks to the vehement cajoling of my dear sweet worried sick mother (see where the guilt comes from?).

So cut this long story short, I hung out by the car for a while until I started to get cold (that denim was fashionable, but it didn't do much to cut the wind) so I headed back to where this all began, not really sure what I would do next. It just so happened that as I was walking into the auction house, my dad was walking out. Cue the joyful reunion, rushed explanations, the telling of how my dad almost bought a $900 quilt because the auctioneer mistook his wild gesticulations to my mother as a bid. It was great.

I look back on it now with such a shudder to think if I lost my child at a crowded fairground for 45 minutes, and the sheer panic that would have overtaken me by that point. I try not to think about it too much.