I was born in a small town

We decided on brunch, and ended up going to this place called Le Peep. As we were waiting for a table, I hear someone behind me say “Felix?”

I turn around, and it’s my old friend Craig – someone I’ve known since middle school. What a fantastic surprise! I ended up going over to his table and said hi to his wife Michelle, and also got to say hello to his mom.

Of all the places we could have chosen to eat, how serendipitous that we chose this place. As I was to find out later, Craig and Michelle had planned on eating earlier… but also got delayed for some reason or another. How fantastic is it that our paths ended up crossing?

We exchanged info and I went to my table with a huge grin on my face. Indianapolis isn’t really that small of a city, but I like to think that it is. Encounters like this make going home seem a bit more magical. That’s not the right word, but it’s the first word that comes to mind.

For the rest of the day, everywhere I went, I thought of the the younger me, the one from fifteen years ago… and saw the city through his eyes.

After lunch, Jenny and Andrew went back to the hotel to nap. Shane went to go tend to the fish (he cleans and feeds them, twice daily, and the whole process takes about 2 hours minimum). Dan and I ended up hanging out – we hit an Apple store at a nearby mall, and caught the third episode of Star Wars.

The movie was ok. Nothing jaw-dropping, but sort of what I expected after having seen Episodes I and II. I can’t tell if I’m turning into a crotchety old man who complains about how movies “used to be better.” When I saw Episodes IV, V and VI… it seemed like I was constantly being introduced to this new world, and I learned about its rules and people’s behaviours through the movies. Anymore… the early episodes seem to have lost that “discovery” part, relying more on special effects to handle that part of things.

I guess it didn’t help that I had a family right behind me, talking through the whole movie. The kids were old enough to ask some fairly detailed questions, and the dad did nothing to hush them up. At several turns, it was the dad who would yell out shit like “Wow! Did you see that!”

I kept meaning to turn around and say something to them, but held off because of the kids. Regardless of what the outcome would have been, I didn’t want to risk ruining Star Wars for these kids. The last thing I wanted was for them to have some childhood memory of a random dude going all aggro on their dad, telling him to shut his cakehole.