Today's fun did not end with lunch. I was so stuffed, I felt sleepy and needed a nap before I could even think of doing anything else, so headed over the Memorial Union and lay down on the grass on the Terrace. I alternated between dozing and staring at the clouds. As the day wore on, the crowd came and went and came, the band set up and played.
Among the people and things I saw and heard:
1. Scanner Dan.
3. Weedstock organizer and sometimes candidate for mayor, Ben Masel.
4. Chris Plata and Extra Hot, playing Tex-Mex versions of "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Stir It Up", among other things.
5. A cloud that looked like Kokopelli.
6. Tribes of small children.
7. People playing poker, euchre, Uno, and Mah Jong.
8. Frat boys, punk kids, studious grad students, alumni, elderly couples, lesbian couples, people on bikes, people on boats...basically a vast array of the human spectrum all getting along together in the afternoon sunlight.
9. Lots of beer, and a table full of students smoking a hooka.
10. Ducks.
When the band took a set break and my stomach had settled from my earlier feast, I decided to treat myself to a Babcock Hall ice cream cone: orange custard chocolate chip. Yum. I was heading back outside to the terrace, cone in hand and licking happily, when the entire scoop launched itself onto the pavement of the Terrace. I was staring at my fallen scoop in display when I young man I had never ever seen before walked up to me and said, "You should get them to give you another."
I replied that I doubted they gave out replacement cones for silly mishaps, but he countered, "Come on. If they don't give you one, I'll buy you a new one." I followed him back inside, rather dazedly, I guess.
He walked up to the ice cream counter and told the girl, "I don't know this girl, but the entire scoop fell off her cone " I held up my empty cone as evidence, "so I would like you to give her a new one." The girl chuckled and scooped another cone, while the guy vanished. I didn't see him again for the rest of the rest, the Ice Cream Samaritan, but I did enjoy the cone....very carefully.
I stayed on the Terrace lawn until the bugs got thick and all the families with small children who had surrounded me went home. Then I, too, made my way back home, blissed out on my day.
