Tuesday was off to a bad start. Mostly it was work that was screwing up what would have been an otherwise delightful day. Also, I'd forgotten to bring my remaining stuffed poblano pepper, left over from last night's delicious dinner, for lunch. To cheer myself up, I coaxed Jeremiah into joining me for lunch at my new favorite spot near my office, Cafe Posh. I tried to find a site to share with you but they don't have one. Cafe Posh is located in a shopping center next to a little shoe store that's next to the Kroger that houses the Starbucks which supplies the fuel for my frappucino monkey. It is not posh. I've wondered a couple times if maybe that's the name of the family that owns and operates it.
Anyway, I love the tiny, middle eastern woman that seems to lord over the place. She's always nice. What? I like nice. They make all their own breads and everything is delightfully fresh. I've been making my co-workers go there with me, one at a time. Plus, wi-fi! Annnnyhoo, Tuesdays and Thursdays they do a falalfel special (yum! homemade pita) and I wanted to try it. Jeremiah was pretty easy to convince. It was, for the first time in about a year, I think, not 100 degrees outside, so I walked.
I was already feeling a bit lighter at the prospect of getting to see Jeremiah right in the middle of the day during the week but then, as if Lawrence Welk had himself smiled down upon me, things got even better. There's a big ol' fountain out in front of the cafe. As Jeremiah and I approached it together we saw that the fountain had been filled with LOTS of soapy bubbles. It was overflowing with soft fluff. There was a gentle breeze and as the wee-bitty kids and their parents who had gathered around it drove their arms in up to the elbows and threw bubbly-fluff into the air, the breeze would catch it and the bubbles would float gleefully above everyone's heads. They looked like cartoon amoebas.
Here's the thing about a world filled with bubbles - it makes everyone cheerful. One woman told us that when they first got to the fountain there was a wall of bubbles so huge that it covered the benches around the fountain. Indeed, the benches were stained with soap scum. We sat outside to eat our sandwiches and every single person who walked by, if they didn't stop to play in the bubbles, smiled. From what we could glean, the bubbles were a teenage prank. Ah, those awful, underwear-exposing, meddling kids.
3 comments:
Like most Americans, bubbles had several walk-on scenes in my childhood. Back when we all lived in Indiana, there were two sure bets:
1 ) No songbird was safe from the wrath of our Crossman 760 pump BB guns.
B ) The two fountains on the terraced lawn of the rich folks' house down the street would be filled with liquid dish soap at least once monthly.
They were the people who owned the local drug store chain, and they were wealthy beyond anything we could dream of in our philosophy, Doris.
I sure wish I could remember their name.
Paul's dog, Skeeter, died in their yard. See? I can remember the doomed dog's name. Point of fact, he died under their yard. He was digging in a small tunnel when it collapsed on him.
The owners of the house insisted that it was an earthquake, and not the massive amounts of terracing with no regard for the fact that they lived in Anderson, that was the cause of what the press was now calling a "dogtastrophe". They promised to do all they could to get Skeeter out. Then they packed dirt on the entrance and called it a day.
They also used to loudly say to us kids that they enjoyed the bubbles, even if they had not been the ones who dumped a gallon of them into the fountains. Yes sir, they beat that drum loud and steady. In a different time, they might have had a ribbon magnet on their car that said, "I support fountain bubbles", even though they clearly had no choice.
Those bubbles were so pretty. They were born out of a juvenile expression of class warfare. Those bubbles. They swelled from pools of ambivalence.
This is very romantic. Your life is just like a Julie Andrews movie.
Wouldn't it be funny if you carried an iPod with EXTERNAL (but hidden) speakers so you could play your own background music in every situation? For this scene, you could have gradually increased the volume on some swollen orchestral piece as you and Jeremiah approached each other.
NOTE: I own the rights to this idea.
AH yes. I have been seeing this everywhere lately. The bubble fad must be making its way around Atlanta. But you are right, I smile everytime. And if I was ever at a place I could stop, I would happily let my children play in it. Because when else can you play in bubbles 10 ft high. It's glorious.
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