jkelly's blog

In 1964, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer debuted on television, and the special is still shown each year around the holidays. Burl Ives is the snowman narrator and sings some songs, and there’s an elf named Hermey who would rather be a dentist than make toys, and, of course, there’s Rudolph, whose dad covers up his bright red nose so the other reindeer won’t laugh and call him names. It’s a buddy movie, with Hermey and Rudolph hooking up when their perceived shortcomings are exposed, and they end up running away, whereupon they accidentally find the Island of Misfit Toys.

We couldn’t believe it. My wife and I were driving on the freeway, with the kids in the minivan, headed to a large toy store to buy expensive plastic play equipment for the yard, when we saw a small car passing us in the lane to our right. The young woman driving had her left foot hanging out the driver’s side window. In order to physically achieve this, her seat was reclined quite far back, and she could juuust barely see over her steering wheel. She was wearing shades and looked very relaxed. And she was wearing flip-flops, of course, or at least she was on her left foot.

What makes a big city? In New York, you know it by what you see. It’s the mountain range of buildings that rise up in the spaces between the grid of surface streets. It’s the traffic exhaust, which ends up on the Kleenex when you blow your nose at night. It’s the sheer number of yellow Crown Vic cabs and black Lincoln limo sedans that pass you by.

Let’s say it’s 1982, and we’re in a small town in Minnesota, where we find a kid who rides his bike every day. He rides to the park, he rides to his baseball games, he rides to the library, and he even rides to school when he can. One day, he randomly decides he’ll bicycle with a helmet on (perhaps he likes the look of it, perhaps he read in a medical journal that it was a good idea, whatever…), and off he goes.