Oklahoma City is moving the stretch of I-40 that runs downtown, dubbed the Crosstown Expressway, five blocks south of its current location. The new highway will be sunk below the roadway to allow for pedestrian bridges and roadways and the development of a large urban park. A boulevard will take the place of the current highway, one that Mayor Cornett hopes will be the gem of the City. The plan has garnered lots of national press, but as city planner Jeff Speck points out in his recently completed walkability report on Oklahoma City (skip to "Mistakes About To Be Made" starting on page 38), the boulevard as it's currently envisioned will accomodate far more car traffic than it needs to and will therefore inhibit pedestrian activity precisely in the area where the City wants to encourage it the most. Speck recommends that OKC use Commonwealth Avenue Mall in Boston's Back Bay as a model for how to build a boulevard. Will the City take Speck's advice? Or will they insist that it's disanalogous since Commonwealth Avenue wasn't originally a highway? (It was originally a marsh. Literally.)
Thank goodness for The Infrastructurist. Check out the post from Monday, July 6th, entitled "Huh?! 4 Cases of How Tearing Down A Highway Can Relieve Traffic Jams (And Save Your City)." The title kinda says it all. Kudos to Seoul, Portland, and San Francisco for replacing highways with structures that actually encourage people to experience their cities in some other way than from the dashboard of their cars.
Oklahoma City leaders, are you reading The Infrastructurist? Are you getting this?
Oh, and so we're true to our name here at Oklachusetts, I would be remiss not to mention the Rose Kennedy Greenway that replaced Boston's Central Artery after it became the Big Dig.
So, if Oklahoma City's goal is to move the cars someplace else and to encourage mixed-use development where pedestrians, cyclists, cars, buses, streetcars, and businesses can all coexist and commingle and connect (and any other co- word you can think of), then please don't replace a highway with a boulevard that is a highway in every way but its name.
UPDATE: Architects, urban planners, civic leaders, entrepreneurs, and creative people everywhere: if you are wondering what we can do with the bones (the steel beams and concrete slabs) of I-40 once it's relocated, perhaps you should check out these worthy projects: the High Line Park in NYC and the Big Dig House in Lexington, MA.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Red, White, and Blueberries
This Fourth of July, for the second year in a row, we spent our holiday with our favorite farmer and his wife. This year our friend Anne came, too. Emily met Ward when she worked as a grower at Lindentree Farm in 2004. He quickly became her friend and mentor, teaching her not just how to drive a tractor, how to identify the different signs of pest infestation and plant disease, and how much, when, and where to plant. He also taught her that although farming is backbreaking work, there are many small pleasures that come with working the land, like discovering that swallowtail caterpillars, beautiful enough in their own right, will shoot out bright orange horns to ward off predators if you gently squeeze them and that nothing is better than tasting a sun-warmed melon hacked open right in the field. She learned that picking the first tomatoes of the season and gathering handfuls of fragrant basil come along with picking rocks out of field in March and pulling weeds from between tiny carrot shoots on your stomach for hours.
Ward and Nora rent a house that abuts one of the trails that Henry David Thoreau walked when he worked as a surveyor for the town of Concord in the 1850s. Across the road is Hutchins Farm, where Ward now works, which has been designated farmland since 1775 but has been worked by humans for much longer than that. Plowing those fields, Ward has discoved many Native American artifacts--spearheads, axes, flint shards--some of which are ten thousand years old. He works on hallowed ground.
Ward gave us a tour of the farm before dinner. Walking past the apple orchard, plucking blueberries off of 30-year old bushes, hiking down into a valley striped with rows and rows of onions and summer squash and scallions, I could not help but think that this rivaled any fireworks display. A squash blossom is just as colorful and explosive. And man, you should have tasted those sugar snap peas! Bang!
The Fourth of July is our nation's time to reflect on and celebrate our political and cultural independence, and to take pride in the fact that our country still is a beacon of hope for people everywhere who aspire to freedom. Spending the Fourth on a farm seems an appropriate form of celebration: those who choose to work as farmers enjoy a certain kind of independence from 9-to-5 cubicle employment. Farmers come close to achieving what Thoreau himself hoped to achieve by moving to Walden Pond: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
But Thoreau didn't live in the woods forever (and he was only a mile away from town!), and farming is more about dependence than independence: our dependence on the land and nature for survival; our dependence on the sun and the rain and the earth to provide the raw ingredients and energy necessary to grow our food; our dependence on culture and tradition; our dependence on one another. On the day we celebrate our independence as a nation, I think it is also fitting to celebrate and honor those things upon which our lives depend.
Ward and Nora rent a house that abuts one of the trails that Henry David Thoreau walked when he worked as a surveyor for the town of Concord in the 1850s. Across the road is Hutchins Farm, where Ward now works, which has been designated farmland since 1775 but has been worked by humans for much longer than that. Plowing those fields, Ward has discoved many Native American artifacts--spearheads, axes, flint shards--some of which are ten thousand years old. He works on hallowed ground. 
Ward gave us a tour of the farm before dinner. Walking past the apple orchard, plucking blueberries off of 30-year old bushes, hiking down into a valley striped with rows and rows of onions and summer squash and scallions, I could not help but think that this rivaled any fireworks display. A squash blossom is just as colorful and explosive. And man, you should have tasted those sugar snap peas! Bang! 
The Fourth of July is our nation's time to reflect on and celebrate our political and cultural independence, and to take pride in the fact that our country still is a beacon of hope for people everywhere who aspire to freedom. Spending the Fourth on a farm seems an appropriate form of celebration: those who choose to work as farmers enjoy a certain kind of independence from 9-to-5 cubicle employment. Farmers come close to achieving what Thoreau himself hoped to achieve by moving to Walden Pond: "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." 
But Thoreau didn't live in the woods forever (and he was only a mile away from town!), and farming is more about dependence than independence: our dependence on the land and nature for survival; our dependence on the sun and the rain and the earth to provide the raw ingredients and energy necessary to grow our food; our dependence on culture and tradition; our dependence on one another. On the day we celebrate our independence as a nation, I think it is also fitting to celebrate and honor those things upon which our lives depend.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Riding to Work in the Year 2009
I'll miss commuting to work on the T.
Even in the dead of winter, waiting on the platform in the bone-jarring cold,
without my gloves again, I appreciated the opportunity to ride the T.
Even when the subway car was too full to sit, too full even to stand,
obnoxious perfumes of strangers in the morning giving way to sour sweat of strangers
in the evening, teenagers who listen to their music too loud and talk too loud (I always listen for The Flaming Lips' Riding to Work in the Year 2025),
all the faces reading and talking and sitting in silence, daydreaming, thinking,
the train delayed without explanation and all you want is to be home
but you overhear a man in khakis and duck boots tell his lady friend
(more interested in Teen Vogue) about the porcini salad he paid too much for--
despite these annoyances, the T still beats traffic jams.
I like driving to work without traffic jams--I don't like having no choice
BUT to drive. Riding the T can be an event. Riding the T can be banal.
For daily commuters, the T (and perhaps the bus) offers
small moments of grace, if we're willing to notice them.
I snapped these photos on my cell phone camera between January and April 2009.
Even in the dead of winter, waiting on the platform in the bone-jarring cold,
without my gloves again, I appreciated the opportunity to ride the T. 
Even when the subway car was too full to sit, too full even to stand, 
obnoxious perfumes of strangers in the morning giving way to sour sweat of strangers 
in the evening, teenagers who listen to their music too loud and talk too loud (I always listen for The Flaming Lips' Riding to Work in the Year 2025),
all the faces reading and talking and sitting in silence, daydreaming, thinking, 
the train delayed without explanation and all you want is to be home 
but you overhear a man in khakis and duck boots tell his lady friend 
(more interested in Teen Vogue) about the porcini salad he paid too much for--
despite these annoyances, the T still beats traffic jams. 
I like driving to work without traffic jams--I don't like having no choice 
BUT to drive. Riding the T can be an event. Riding the T can be banal.
For daily commuters, the T (and perhaps the bus) offers 
small moments of grace, if we're willing to notice them. 
I snapped these photos on my cell phone camera between January and April 2009.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Battlestar Oklachusetts
June is almost over, July is our last month in Massachusetts, and we've started packing for the big move. Today is my last day of work. It's been raining for two weeks straight, but every once in a while the sun comes out and steams up the city. The air is humid and heavy, and I wish it would stop hanging around and do something already.
*
Emmett has taken an interest in bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, and rolls of tape.
I, on the other hand, have not, and would much rather watch episodes of Battlestar Gallactica. Humanity has been suprise-attacked by the Cylons--brutal, sentient machines that turned on their human creators. The survivors jump around the galaxy on a fleet of spaceships looking for Earth while trying to avoid annihilation. At the end of Season 2.5, they've found a habitable planet hidden from their enemies in a nebula; against the audience's better judgment they decide to abandon their ships and inhabit the planet (New Caprica, they call it) that could become their permanent home.
*
Two nights ago, after we put Emmett to bed, Emily and I watched the first four episodes of Season Three, in which the humans manage to escape (barely) from Cylon captivity on New Caprica, but sadly the half-human, half-Cylon baby they've been secretly harboring is abducted. Later that night, Emily and I both had long, involved, vivid dreams featuring infants and exodi. I woke up in a sweat, disoriented by the drum of fan, and forgot that a month back we'd transitioned Emmett to the crib.
*
If you are ever on the cusp of a major life change, I recommend you head to the science fiction section of your local video store. The best movies and shows involve the violent and awkward collision of different species, mindsets, ways of life. A good sf movie is always apocalyptic in the sense that it shows one world ending as another begins.
*
Ridley Scott's Alien, despite all its stomach-bursting gore and its dark-corridor suspense, is really a long meditation on the consequences of reaching too far. You can't explore the deepest recesses of space without encountering a little contagion every now and then, whether this contagion is an 8-foot tall lizard that has acid for blood and will gestate its young inside your measly little body, or the soul-sucking greed that makes large corporations think their workers are expendable. And this contagion you pick up on your Odyssey home may just follow you for the rest of your life. You cannot overcome this contagion. You must transform it by merging with it. That's why the humans in Battlestar Gallactica were so keen on protecting their half-human, half-Cylon charge: life could never be the way it was before, so they knew that she was the key to their future.
*
Ray Suarez wrote a book called The Old Neighbood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration: 1966-1999. I found it on the shelf as we were packing our books and have been flipping through it for a week or two. People left the cities in the 1950s thinking that a better life awaited them in the new communities being constructed on old farms at the edge of town. City life was vibrant and active but dirty, cramped, and dangerous, and life in the new suburb would be sterile but clean and spacious. Everything and everyone would look the same, they thought. There we can finally be free, they thought.
*
Free from what? Cylons?
*
Emily's parents threw us a Boston-themed going away party this weekend. Lobster bisque, Fenway franks, Harpoon beer, ice cream with Brigham's hot fudge sauce. People from all walks of our life here showed up: Emily's farm friends; our old barbecue crew; folks from Tufts and Emerson; neighbors, bandmates, cousins, aunts and uncles, former colleagues.
Amid all these humans, Emmett suffered a major case of "stranger danger" anxiety. For example, he cried every time he saw our friend Dan. Gee, I can't imagine why.
*
At the party a friend of mine I always see at Boomerangs, JP's thrift store, gave me a book he'd found there that reminded him of me. He even wrote me a little farewell note on the front page. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd donated that same book to Boommerangs not three days before. Sometimes the things you choose to leave have a strange way of refusing to be left behind.
*
In the first three seasons, all Jack from Lost wanted to do was leave the island, but once he left all he wanted was to return. The island is his Battlestar, skipping through time and space.
*
Is Boston the New Caprica we're fleeing, or is Oklahoma City the New Caprica we're fleeing to? Where is our earth? We may never find it. We take solace in the vessel that takes us from point A to B.
*
Emmett has taken an interest in bubble wrap, cardboard boxes, and rolls of tape.
I, on the other hand, have not, and would much rather watch episodes of Battlestar Gallactica. Humanity has been suprise-attacked by the Cylons--brutal, sentient machines that turned on their human creators. The survivors jump around the galaxy on a fleet of spaceships looking for Earth while trying to avoid annihilation. At the end of Season 2.5, they've found a habitable planet hidden from their enemies in a nebula; against the audience's better judgment they decide to abandon their ships and inhabit the planet (New Caprica, they call it) that could become their permanent home.
*
Two nights ago, after we put Emmett to bed, Emily and I watched the first four episodes of Season Three, in which the humans manage to escape (barely) from Cylon captivity on New Caprica, but sadly the half-human, half-Cylon baby they've been secretly harboring is abducted. Later that night, Emily and I both had long, involved, vivid dreams featuring infants and exodi. I woke up in a sweat, disoriented by the drum of fan, and forgot that a month back we'd transitioned Emmett to the crib.
*
If you are ever on the cusp of a major life change, I recommend you head to the science fiction section of your local video store. The best movies and shows involve the violent and awkward collision of different species, mindsets, ways of life. A good sf movie is always apocalyptic in the sense that it shows one world ending as another begins.
*
Ridley Scott's Alien, despite all its stomach-bursting gore and its dark-corridor suspense, is really a long meditation on the consequences of reaching too far. You can't explore the deepest recesses of space without encountering a little contagion every now and then, whether this contagion is an 8-foot tall lizard that has acid for blood and will gestate its young inside your measly little body, or the soul-sucking greed that makes large corporations think their workers are expendable. And this contagion you pick up on your Odyssey home may just follow you for the rest of your life. You cannot overcome this contagion. You must transform it by merging with it. That's why the humans in Battlestar Gallactica were so keen on protecting their half-human, half-Cylon charge: life could never be the way it was before, so they knew that she was the key to their future.
*
Ray Suarez wrote a book called The Old Neighbood: What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration: 1966-1999. I found it on the shelf as we were packing our books and have been flipping through it for a week or two. People left the cities in the 1950s thinking that a better life awaited them in the new communities being constructed on old farms at the edge of town. City life was vibrant and active but dirty, cramped, and dangerous, and life in the new suburb would be sterile but clean and spacious. Everything and everyone would look the same, they thought. There we can finally be free, they thought.
*
Free from what? Cylons?
*
Emily's parents threw us a Boston-themed going away party this weekend. Lobster bisque, Fenway franks, Harpoon beer, ice cream with Brigham's hot fudge sauce. People from all walks of our life here showed up: Emily's farm friends; our old barbecue crew; folks from Tufts and Emerson; neighbors, bandmates, cousins, aunts and uncles, former colleagues.
Amid all these humans, Emmett suffered a major case of "stranger danger" anxiety. For example, he cried every time he saw our friend Dan. Gee, I can't imagine why.
*
At the party a friend of mine I always see at Boomerangs, JP's thrift store, gave me a book he'd found there that reminded him of me. He even wrote me a little farewell note on the front page. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I'd donated that same book to Boommerangs not three days before. Sometimes the things you choose to leave have a strange way of refusing to be left behind.
*
In the first three seasons, all Jack from Lost wanted to do was leave the island, but once he left all he wanted was to return. The island is his Battlestar, skipping through time and space.
*
Is Boston the New Caprica we're fleeing, or is Oklahoma City the New Caprica we're fleeing to? Where is our earth? We may never find it. We take solace in the vessel that takes us from point A to B.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
A Bird's Eye View of Population Density and Sparsity
It's hard to see the forest for the trees. It's even harder to see the forest for the trees when the forest has been deforested. Translation: it's hard to see how dense or sparse a neighborhood is or has become when you are living in it. Sometimes you need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Or, in this case, you need to take a hundred steps up and look at the picture from above. This is where satellite imagery can help.
Inspired by Charles Benton's "kite aerial photography" (but not actually owning a kite), I explored Bing's maps page and discovered a cool feature: "Bird's Eye View" satellite imagery. Using this tool, I "Binged" nine of my previous addresses to see what they look like from the air. To me, the results reveal much about differing assumptions of how and where we ought to live, and how we ought to go about planning cities and neighborhoods.
Check them out. Two of these are in Cincinnati, three are in Oklahoma City, and four are in Boston. Can you tell which ones are which? The first reader to put all the right answers in a comment will win a free Oklachusetts sticker.
But also, I'm wondering if you agree with me that the most aesthetically pleasing neighborhoods from the air often have the sparsest populations on the ground (and if you read my last post, you'll remember how important I think it is to have densely populated neighborhoods). Some of these 'hoods look like they were designed mostly for the approval of plane passengers cruising overhead. One more thing: which of these places looks the most "family friendly"? What does this mean, anyway? Is it friendly to have to put your kid in a car seat whenever you want to go anywhere?
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
Inspired by Charles Benton's "kite aerial photography" (but not actually owning a kite), I explored Bing's maps page and discovered a cool feature: "Bird's Eye View" satellite imagery. Using this tool, I "Binged" nine of my previous addresses to see what they look like from the air. To me, the results reveal much about differing assumptions of how and where we ought to live, and how we ought to go about planning cities and neighborhoods.
Check them out. Two of these are in Cincinnati, three are in Oklahoma City, and four are in Boston. Can you tell which ones are which? The first reader to put all the right answers in a comment will win a free Oklachusetts sticker.
But also, I'm wondering if you agree with me that the most aesthetically pleasing neighborhoods from the air often have the sparsest populations on the ground (and if you read my last post, you'll remember how important I think it is to have densely populated neighborhoods). Some of these 'hoods look like they were designed mostly for the approval of plane passengers cruising overhead. One more thing: which of these places looks the most "family friendly"? What does this mean, anyway? Is it friendly to have to put your kid in a car seat whenever you want to go anywhere?
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
We Want Density, Not a Thin City
Recently I wrote a post about "walkability" in which I asked the readers of Massahoma, Oklachusetts to visit the WalkScore website to determine how walkable their neighborhoods are. Almost without fail, the addresses with the highest WalkScores were in cities with the highest population densities. This does not surprise me at all, because a high population density means more people concentrated into a particular area means greater demand for the goods and services that businesses provide, and this demand is more frequent and consistent because it can come in the steady form of foot traffic (as opposed to only coming by car), which means that land can be developed for other, more significant purposes than parking. High population density equals foot traffic equals consistent demand equals business development. Add it all up and you have thriving urban areas where people live, work, study, shop, and play. Population density is what drives mixed-used development. And as Blair Humphreys notes in his most recent post on imagiNATIVE america, streetcars can play a big part in the creation of this density and development.
Check out these numbers from the 2000 Census Data: of the three major cities I lived in (Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, and Boston), Boston has the largest population at 608,352 and the highest density at 12,172.3 people per square mile, while Cincinnati has the smallest population at 332,458 but the second highest density at 4247.2 people per square mile. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, has a population of 547,274 but a density of 833.8 people per square mile.
Let's put these figures into larger perspective. Of the 263 biggest cities in the US (cities with populations over 100,000), Boston ranks 21st, OKC 31st, and Cincinnati 56th. But when ranked by population density, Boston is 10th, Cincinnati is 76th, and Oklahoma City is 258th out of 263. I know Oklahoma City doesn't have the natural boundaries like Boston and Cincinnati have (the Charles River, the Bay, the Ohio River, etc.), and I know Oklahoma City went on what Steve Lackmeyer in his book OKC Second Time Around calls an "annexation spree" in the 1950s that saw its land area jump from 80 to 475 square miles by 1961 (today it covers 620 square miles and is the second largest major metropolitan area next to Jacksonville, Florida). I also know that this annexation spree happened at the same time Oklahoma City's extensive streetcar system and interurban passenger rail service was being dismantled (today no such service exists, though many people are pushing hard to have streetcars included in MAPS 3). For an in-depth account of OKC's streetcar past, start with Doug Loudenback's "Okc Trolleys Part 1". For photos of downtown's long gone Interurban Terminal, see the spread at Rezone OKC.
I know these things, but I don't have to be an urban planner to realize that 258 out of 263 is absurd. The number isn't entirely accurate, since there is more rural square footage in Oklahoma City than urban square footage. But even if you deannexed the rural areas (and generated a political firestorm in the process) and thus reduced its total square footage, OKC's population density would still be lower than it would have been if not for four decisions that eroded the city's core:
1) Unchecked expansion of city limits;
2) Development outward instead of inward;
3) Disappearance of streetcar and passenger rail service;
4) "Clearance and Redevelopment" of the urban landscape through Urban Renewal (to see what was lost, check out these maps, courtesy once again of Blair).
If Oklahoma City had restricted its territorial growth, concentrated its development, and preserved its architectural buildings and transportation infrastructure, then we'd be in a different league right now. For the most part, this is what Boston did. But OKC didn't, and so every civic decision we make from now on must somehow address our critical lack of population density.
Stay tuned for some satellite images that illustrate this problem...and a reader contest!
Check out these numbers from the 2000 Census Data: of the three major cities I lived in (Oklahoma City, Cincinnati, and Boston), Boston has the largest population at 608,352 and the highest density at 12,172.3 people per square mile, while Cincinnati has the smallest population at 332,458 but the second highest density at 4247.2 people per square mile. Oklahoma City, meanwhile, has a population of 547,274 but a density of 833.8 people per square mile.
Let's put these figures into larger perspective. Of the 263 biggest cities in the US (cities with populations over 100,000), Boston ranks 21st, OKC 31st, and Cincinnati 56th. But when ranked by population density, Boston is 10th, Cincinnati is 76th, and Oklahoma City is 258th out of 263. I know Oklahoma City doesn't have the natural boundaries like Boston and Cincinnati have (the Charles River, the Bay, the Ohio River, etc.), and I know Oklahoma City went on what Steve Lackmeyer in his book OKC Second Time Around calls an "annexation spree" in the 1950s that saw its land area jump from 80 to 475 square miles by 1961 (today it covers 620 square miles and is the second largest major metropolitan area next to Jacksonville, Florida). I also know that this annexation spree happened at the same time Oklahoma City's extensive streetcar system and interurban passenger rail service was being dismantled (today no such service exists, though many people are pushing hard to have streetcars included in MAPS 3). For an in-depth account of OKC's streetcar past, start with Doug Loudenback's "Okc Trolleys Part 1". For photos of downtown's long gone Interurban Terminal, see the spread at Rezone OKC.
I know these things, but I don't have to be an urban planner to realize that 258 out of 263 is absurd. The number isn't entirely accurate, since there is more rural square footage in Oklahoma City than urban square footage. But even if you deannexed the rural areas (and generated a political firestorm in the process) and thus reduced its total square footage, OKC's population density would still be lower than it would have been if not for four decisions that eroded the city's core:
1) Unchecked expansion of city limits;
2) Development outward instead of inward;
3) Disappearance of streetcar and passenger rail service;
4) "Clearance and Redevelopment" of the urban landscape through Urban Renewal (to see what was lost, check out these maps, courtesy once again of Blair).
If Oklahoma City had restricted its territorial growth, concentrated its development, and preserved its architectural buildings and transportation infrastructure, then we'd be in a different league right now. For the most part, this is what Boston did. But OKC didn't, and so every civic decision we make from now on must somehow address our critical lack of population density.
Stay tuned for some satellite images that illustrate this problem...and a reader contest!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Some Thoughts on Father's Day
Fathers may not admit it, but they like to push their children in strollers or wear them in slings because it secretly makes them feel cool.
When I wear or stroll Emmett down Centre Street, whether I'm at the coffee shop or bakery or library or the bank, people gawk as we approach--little old ladies ooh and ahh, young couples give us puppy dog eyes and hold each other's hand a little tighter, tattooed baristas say things like "that's one good looking lad" without a trace of irony, and even homeless dudes forget to ask me for some spare change. Emmett is my instant attention-getter, my get-out-of-obscurity-free card, and when he's with me, I forget that my hair is turning gray, that my hairline is receding, that my back is killing me, and that I didn't get enough sleep the night before. I could weigh 250 pounds, be hungover in Vegas with a huge beard and two loser friends like that fat dude from The Hangover, but throw a baby on me and I'm pure box-office gold.
In fact, Emmett's kinda gotten to my head. I'm more than a little immodest when he and I are hanging out. Take this situation, for example:
Little Old Lady (who sees me standing in the aisle of the convenience store with Emmett strapped to my chest): Oh, how cute! How precious!
Chad: Thank you!
LOL: How old?
C: I'll be 33 in July!
Or this one: I'm walking down the sidewalk with a cup of coffee and I overhear a beautiful woman say to her friend, "Isn't he darling?"
Chad: Are you talking about me? Thank you!
Beautiful Lady (choosing to ignore me): Just adorable!
C (choosing to ignore that she's ignoring me): Thank you, thank you, thank you!
BL (who looks the other way as we pass, then whispers to her friend): I was talking about the baby.
Okay, so maybe most of the time they are talking about the boy and not the father. But yesterday, Father's Day, we were at a Building 19 looking for discounted Persian rugs, when an older gentleman, stooped with a cane, and I had the following exchange:
Older Gentleman: That sure is a cute one!
Chad: Thank you!
OG: Enjoy him because it won't be this way forever!
C: Kids grow up pretty quick, huh?
OG: Sure, but so do their parents! One day you'll be like I am!
So I am getting old and getting older by the minute. Good thing I have Emmett around to make me look young. And in case you think this is vanity or pride, please remember that this is Shakespeare-approved vanity or pride. Shakespeare tells us in his second sonnet that to have children is "to be new made when thou art old, / And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold."
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