Parked and Malled

I started to walk around Lake Nokomis. I wanted to see, close-up, the deer that has been sighted on the east side. It has been assembled from motorcycle parts and has, appropriately, a small granite stone for a brain.

But then it started to rain; not hard, but enough to allow me to calculate the shortest way back to the pickup. I reversed direction and, since it was early, drove ten minutes to the Mall of America, where I walk when the weather is bad. There are no Motorcycle Deer at the Mall, but there is a lot of remodeling, and someone needs to watch it.

I know only one person, by name, at the Mall: Chuck. We met because Chuck, who walks only far enough to get to a gathering of coffee friends, persistently asked me about my pickups; both the old one and the newer one. Chuck is subtle, and always slips in a good word about going to church. He was especially subtle this morning.

"I know why you bought that big pickup!", he said, as a kind of Good Morning. "You wanted reliable transportation to get to church on Sunday mornings!"

"No," I answered. "I wanted that pickup so that if, several years from now, I need to go to someone's funeral, I will have reliable transportation."

Chuck whipped off his baseball cap, and pointed to his head. I didn't know he was mostly bald, except for a ring of stubble about an eighth of an inch long.

"My wife says I need a haircut," he informed me, "but I told her I didn't need a haircut: Conrad needs a haircut! 'Who's Conrad?'" she asked.

Our shagginess precedes us.

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