Too cold, too old

If it's too loud, you're too old. So says the rock festival mantra. I'm not old! I'm still hip and groovy, or at least hippy and grooved. I had a great time at Eric Clapton's Guitar Festival at the Cotton Bowl a year or so back, and at Santana and Steely Dan concerts with my sons. I play an occasional game of The Sims on the computer. I can send text messages on my cell phone, although I tend to use complete sentences and punctuation.

Earlier this week I was just too darn confused navigating the unfamiliar Park Lane DART Park & Ride station. Dropping a friend to catch the train, I got bogged down in the parking lot instead of the drive-through Throw-Mama-From-The-Train-A-Kiss-Goodbye lane. My only escape route led up a ramp and through a parking garage. I emerged on the backside of a Best Buy store. Tired and frustrated I drove around the building, only to encounter a campground of wacko Playstation 3 sidewalk scouts. I was ever so relieved to finally find the access road to the freeway without running over a sleeping bag!

Who are those deranged folks camping on the Best Buy #58 sidewalk? Don't they have real jobs and schools? Why would they stay there when the temp dropped forty degrees and the wind gusted to forty mph that night? I just don't get it, so maybe I am too old after all. Even after reading all about the comraderie of the sidewalk campers in the Dallas Morning News, and learning that most of the campers intended to buy a Playstation 3 at midnight to sell it during the day for 3-4 times the cost, it still seems nuts.

Since Tuesday, I've tried to think of something for which I'd be willing to camp on the sidewalk outside a store. Peace on earth? Yes. Affordable, universal health care? Yes. An end to the ridiculous emphasis on standardized testing of school students for political purposes? Probably. A breakfast at my grandma's house with kolaches and sausage? Yup. That's it though. Let me know the release dates on those, and I'll get my sleeping bag down off the shelf. All is calm, all is bright...