talent show

My brother and his wife visited from Denver this weekend. Between the animated exchanges with our two waiters—one with a French accent, the other Mexican—at the best old-school Italian place in the City (no, not in North Beach), we shared stories with everyone of our childhood summers. I remembered spending most of my sunbleached youth harassing peacocks in Floridian yards, fighting over Fruit Loops, and running around model homes marveling at the water from the conical little dispenser cups.

And it dawned on me once again that, as Edna St. Vincent Millay said, childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. And childhood is the kingdom where any goddamned thing goes. Here, as I discussed with my tablemates tonight, are the two tremendous children from whom we can learn a great deal about really, really meaning it: