I haven't had a lot to write recently, what with life in general, so I hope you'll excuse my absence. Today I want to tell you about an experience we had yesterday. I still don't quite know how I feel about it. Do I feel bad or guilty? Do I think I should feel bad or guilty, and feel a little guilty because in fact I don't? It's odd.

Melody had been quite good all morning, so before we did our shopping, I took her to McDonald's for lunch. It was busy, but not over crowded. We found a booth in the corner, and right as we sat down, a little boy who had been sitting with a woman and her son came over and sat in our booth. Okay, odd, but I looked at the woman and said - loud enough for her to hear "oh, are you going to sit with us buddy?" I fully expected the woman to collect her child, but instead, the woman and her son walked away. What? This boy wasn't her son after all.

He looked at our food and said "french fries." The boy was probably 7 or 8 years old and didn't speak well, so I wondered if he spoke Spanish. He took some fries and started eating. Odd. I looked around for parents who were frantically looking for thier kid...there weren't any. I asked him his name and he babbled. I asked him where his mommy was. He babbled and said "french fries." I asked him in Spanish "donde estas su mama? su abuela?"

He said nothing except "french fries," and continued eating ours.

Melody was observing all this while she munched on her chicken nuggets. She is incredibly sweet, and asked me if she could give him one of her nuggets. I didn't let her. Was it fear of what was happening - which was indeed a strange situation? Was it some sense that a parent would show up from where ever they were? I don't know, but I told her to keep her nugget, but that she was very kind for wanting to offer it to him.

I continued to scan the restaurant for adults looking for a missing child, but none were apparent. I realized it was possible this boy was lost. Had a family accidentally left without him? Had he been abandoned at McDonald's intentionally? So, I asked him to come with me to find the manager of the store...and he freaked.

He started screaming and ran away from me! At that moment I realized something was very "not right" about him and it wasn't that he needed to learn English. It was a language barrier though.

A woman who had been seated facing away from us jumped up when she heard the scream and went after him. Another woman came from the counter where she'd been ordering meals. I'm ashamed to admit that I judged the second woman based on her appearance - overly thin, unkempt appearance, scabby arms and face. She was an addict.

The two women collected the screaming boy and shot glances over our way. The skinny woman sat down in the booth with him and held him while he screamed and screamed. He wanted french fries. The other woman came over to us and apologized profusely. She was his grandmother, they just got into town to visit, she thought the boy was out with his mother's "friend" in the play area, he's autistic. She offered to buy us some more fries, which I declined. I told her that I had just been concerned that he'd gotten lost and was alone. I apologized for upsetting him.

I felt so bad. I felt bad for the boy. I felt bad for the grandmother. I don't know what the family situation is, and I must not judge them based on the brief interaction at a McDonald's, but for heaven's sake, if the "friend" wasn't watching the kids, and the mother wasn't watching the kids, and the grandparents didn't know they were supposed to be watching the kids, who the heck is watching the kids?? This boy is autistic and needs a little extra attention in what could turn out to be stressful situations. His mother didn't even speak to us. In fact she avoided us. I imagine she was embarrassed, so I can't really blame her for that.

I hope that I'm seeing things wrong, and that their family is very happy, healthy, well fed and taken care of; the mother is just naturally skinny, the "friend" is a great father figure, and all the kids are getting all the education and attention they need. I hope that's the case.

But I still felt bad somehow.

Over the last weekend here in Orange County the annual pro surfing competition took place in Huntington Beach. It's a great big event now, covered by local news and newspapers, but the one and only time I went to the OP Pro, it was covered by the news for a very different reason.

Back in 1986, my cousin George was either living out here in California or planning on living out here. He had joined the Navy and was planning on flying F-14s out of Miramar in San Diego. For that glorious summer in 1986, he stayed with us in Fountain Valley. My sister and I adored George like the brother we never had. He was about 10 years older than me and so grown up!

So, Geo and I decided one weekend that we would go down to Huntington to see what there was to see. We didn't know the OP Pro was happening, but we were a little interested in it once we got there. We parked below 1st Street and eventually walked up to 8th Street before heading back to the car. Geo wanted to walk around town - which we did - and do a little sightseeing. This was all before the big "Main Street renovation" project, so the little shops and bars were packed with people, everything felt really charming and authentic. (Unlike now)

On our walk up the street, we wandered through the beach area, watching some of the crowds at the OP Pro. I was still a young teen, about 16 at the time, so George probably didn't want me to be exposed to the rowdy crowds. This was the era of shocking day glow bikinis, plus lots of surfers and skateboarders who had been drinking all day. We saw some guys harassing a girl, trying to provoke her to take her top off, and so we left.

We had walked all the way to 8th street and bought some sodas at the little liquor store on the corner when we decided it was time to turn around and go home. It was pretty hot that day, as Labor Day weekend can be. Well, as we headed back downtown, we saw the smoke. Thick, black smoke. George knew in an instant that it was more than a trash can fire and he was carefully protective of me. As we got closer though, we had to walk through the parking lot in order to get to our car. It had taken about 20 minutes to walk that far and the crowds were rioting by that point.

This is pretty much what we saw as we got closer. I thought Maxwell's was on fire, but in fact it was police cars, the mobil command center for the police, and an ATV. Those guys we had seen harassing the girl to take off her top? Well, they had moved on to other girls, and they had found some takers, but of course it got out of hand when the girls wanted to put their tops back on. It was drunken and depraved, and I was scared.

By the time we were in the parking area on the other side of the pier, the cops were out in riot gear. We were carefully and calmly trying to move away from them, and somehow the crowd swelled in such a way that Geo and I were suddenly right in front of those cops. I can clearly remember the guys' face - completely pumped on adrenaline I'm sure - it was full of as much intensity as the rioters probaby were. He was shouting at everyone to get back, and reached out and shoved George out of his way with enough force that he knocked over the 6' 1" muscled Navy airman former football player. George rolled over but his glasses flew off, and he had to scramble to find them again. I was terrified that the cops would start beating him and I didn't know what to do if that happened.

Fortunately, George was able to recover and jog over to me. We basically ran out of that place and down to our car. Our hearts were racing with fear and adrenaline. We got in the car (the ever popular Ford LTD station wagon) and took off. Within a block, we were making up a song about it and laughing in that release of fear and adrenaline that can only come after a moment like that. And that was a wonderful thing about George - he was able to turn that frightening experience in such a way that I can remember the laughing and singing in the car better than I can remember the fear and danger.

Our brush with the OP Pro of '86 was brief, but enough. I will never go back. I still like to watch surfing. On TV.

I remember while we were wading through that crowd, something else that was more serious than the riot, which at the time seemed ridiculous - we were in the middle of a riot after all! It was someone on top of the camera tower, shouting down that two planes had crashed into each other in Cerritos. George and I didn't know what to think, but when we got home, our excursion seemed so minor in comparison.

This one I read in a Laura Ingalls book.

A housefull or a hole full, you cannot collect a bowl full.  What is it?

Little Nancy Etticoat in her white petticoat and red nose. The longer she stands, the shorter she grows.

What is she?

The year was 1981.

I was 13 years old.

My Girl Scout leader organized a field trip and I surely begged my parents to let me go. It was going to be my first concert. I was a devoted fan of this band for easily 25 years and I was known in my troop to verge on obsessed with them. Who could this band be? Popular bands in 1981 were Hall & Oats, Journey, The Go-Gos, The Tubes and Squeeze. Now, don't get me wrong, I loved all these bands, and The Tubes would have been a strong contender for my first concert, but alas, they weren't THE band that held my fascination.

You've got to understand, until I heard of this band, I listened to the Beatles and Elvis. I was voluntarily cloistered in terms of popular music, and Billy Squier was downright shocking to me! But I was taken, not with Squeeze, not with Journey.

I loved Oingo Boingo.

It could have had something to do with the enormous crush I had on a boy who also liked Oingo Boingo, but this band really changed my concept of the boundaries of music. I saw them for the first time on Halloween night at Universal Amphitheater in Hollywood. Typical of an Oingo Boingo show on Halloween, people in the audience were dressed up in costume. One guy came as the Pope - and continued to do so for another 10 years or more - and another person was dressed as a big Tylenol capsule with a cyanide warning on the side. My friends and I wore Boy Scout shirts. I was in heaven. Many years later I went to their final Halloween show down at Irvine Meadow's Amphitheater and my friend and I had procured back stage passes. How times had progressed for us!

What was your first concert?