A Norman Rockwell Moment

Downtown Minneapolis was swarming with visitors yesterday. Slow-moving, line-forming, hallway-clogging swarms. Like ants, they were!

I’m not sure what brought them in, but as long as they’re spending money, I’m okay with them invading my city.

Ahem.

If you’ve been around me for any amount of time, you will know that I am fascinated by people; and so Friday seemed to be a treat, created just for me.

The sheer number of people, of course, was not fully evident until I tried to buy lunch. It was shocking, frankly, how many people were wandering around indoors with their coats on. Normally, the lunch hour is crowded with people wearing name badges and “office attire”, rushing purposely toward food. Friday, however, the basement of Macy’s (home of many different food options) was cheek-to-jowl with people in sensible shoes loitering thoughtfully in front of one food option after another.

But my favorite tidbit from Friday?

You are acquainted with LeeAnn Chin’s, yes? Nationwide chain of what passes in the fastfood world as “Chinese food”? Too sweet, too heavy -- honestly it smells better than it tastes, although I could see craving it.

Anyway! I watched a gaggle of elderly, red-hatted women eating LeeAnn Chin’s with chopsticks. That’s not amusing in and of itself, but the fact that they clearly had never used chopsticks before was almost touching. They were quite sincere about making it work, and amidst their jostling and laughing at each other, they kept at it, eventually causing a man on his lunch hour to reach over and offer to show them how it’s done.

They took him up on it; and while I’m not sure they ever got any rice to their mouths, they did eventually manage to pick up the larger pieces of whatever they were eating.

It would've made a lovely painting.