A Big Ol' Softball Right Down the Center

I was thinking the other day about being "set up".

I love being there when things get witty, when someone is confronted with the perfect set up, being there the moment "opportunity" meets "clever".

I saw the movie District 9 with T a couple weeks back. While we’d been in the theatre, a sudden thunderstorm had moved through, winds awhistlin’ and ahowlin’, trees falling over, buckets and buckets of rain. It was a big enough deal that both of us had texts on our phones from family asking if the tornado heading toward Minneapolis was in our neighborhood.

Well, not that we’d known, anyway.

All we saw of the storm was the aftermath. The theatre parking lot was practically under water.

And that was enough to ruin my old black flats. Poor old shoes. They had served for four years, and they had served well; but by the time I was done walking through the puddle-ridden parking lot, the little heel on the right shoe had become unmoored from the sole and took on water.

Rather than continue to walk on a mostly-detached heel, I leaned down and tore it off.

The brave little shoe – Rightie, I used to call him – having given his all, walks no more.

And T grinned, the light-bulb of connection blazing over his head, and sang.

“You picked a fine time to leave me loose heal!” *



And that’s what we call the perfect set up.



* For those outside the U.S. who do not know, there is a Kenny Roger's song entitled "You Picked A Fine Time to Leave Me Lucille". It was quite popular at some point, long ago...