The Aerie

The Ones that Got Away

It's funny to recall the blog topics that got away. A lot of times I experience some event and I think "I'm going to blog this," and then when the time comes I can't think of anything to write. Later the situation recurs, and I go through the cycle again.

Then on the other hand, maybe there was something that happened that I blogged... and have forgotten. I do that with books all the time. Just the other day I managed to beg the guys at Uncle Hugo's to take back a copy of N. Lee Wood's "Faraday's Orphans," because when I got home to put it on the shelf, I found it alredy there. So too with blogs.

Have I already written about how some people seem to take up more space than they possibly can? I think I may have. But I was walking down a hallway at Marscon yesterday and it happened again. Huge hotel hallway, easily 15 feet wide. A single, skinny person, tottering slooooowly down the hall ahead of me, and I couldn't pass them. Part of it is their fragility - this person wasn't old, but he exuded an aura of unwellness. I got the sense that if I so much as brushed this person's elbow, he'd tumble to the floor and lie there helpless and crying out weakly. Then there was the totteringness, the slow forward course interrupted by these semi-random lurches to one side or another - not drunken, but as if their legs were too weak to hold them steady.

The end result was that one person in a 15-foot hallway controlled the entire space. About the only way to pass without risking knocking this person down seemed like I would have had to walk with my outside shoulder brushing the wall. So instead I babystepped along behind, waiting for this feeble person to take their expanded spacial configuration out of my way.

This happens all the time in the skyways in downtown Minneapolis, too. I could probably get a research grant to study it.

Then there's the other got-away topic - obnoxious people at theaters. Did I blog about when we went to the dreadful Lorie Line concert, and the drunken suburbanites behind us dropped ice on our head from their drinks and shouted "WHoooohoooO! Yeah!" when Lorie Line began torturing particular Christmas classics? Or the ear-piercing whistles? Did I blog about the two girls who sat behind my wife and I at the RiverivewTheater and champed on popcorn like the entire team of Budweiser Clydesdales being fed brittle plastic cups? My daughter had a similar experience the other day that brings it to mind.

No, I'm not sure what I've blogged and what I haven't. But I'm sure I'm out of time for today, so those topics will continue to have to wait. If they're waiting. Unless I already covered them.

Sigh.

Posted by Albatross at March 3, 2006 6:30 PM | TrackBack