The Wee Ones

On Friday afternoon, I arrived at work in time to witness the kindergartners' encore performance of a dance piece they had improvised a scant hour before. Eight miniature people frolicked among overflowing toy shelves and low round tables and tiny wooden kitchen appliances, oblivious to everything but the music. Sometimes they waved their hands together in the air; sometimes they broke it down individually with signature moves. But when the chorus came, they were all there together, clapping and speak-singing along with slightly mistaken lyrics: "Let's get it started... HA [clap]! Let's get it started... HA [clap]!" All this goes to show that the wee ones can be both crazy and wonderful.

On Saturday evening, Ali and I made it to the street outside the Fitzgerald Theatre in time to score prime bench space near a large bank of speakers. We were there to hear the season premiere broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion; the free outdoor broadcast was followed by a street dance and a five-dollar meatloaf supper. Yes, meatloaf. I'm ashamed to say that we caught Garrison Keillor in a lie at the show's opening. He claimed that those outside needed parkas, that it was a wintry forty-five degrees. In truth, the air was humid, and tiny drops of condensation, miniscule particles of fog, floated around us. We listened to fiddles and dialogue and sound effects from the cast inside, and watched another cast of unscripted characters mill about: three children in orange shirts dancing in the street before the band was even playing, a father allowing his daughter to slide down a nearby hill despite the rapidly-growing mass of grass stains her khakis sustained, a woman in a thick striped poncho and thicker eyeshadow tapping her foot next to her cowboy husband. All this goes to show that the less wee ones, too, can be both crazy and wonderful.