You never know when your childhood will catch you...

This post will probably be a little more sunshine and rainbows than should be for a blog with the word "sewage" in the title, but a little something happened recently which was a nice little gift.

I was in the supermarket Sunday morning, getting the weekly groceries, when I looked down the counters and saw a girl, maybe four or five years old, in pink flip-flops. She was focused like an athlete, and for good reason. You see, the floor of the supermarket was primarily white tile, except for an occasional red tile, staggered in two columns across from each other, about four feet apart.

This girl, obviously sensing the importance of the geometry, was jumping from red tile to red tile, her flip-flops landing slapklomp as she made every attempt to nail each one dead center.

What an AWESOME kid thing to do. And I broke into a grin, because when I was five, I had done almost the same thing. Since I had recently learned chess (I think I peaked around that age), I knew the moves of the pieces, so my rule was I had to step on the tiles in knight moves, two up, one over. And of course, I did right one time and left the next or next thing you knew I'd be walking in circles in the store for eternity.

I never found out what would've happened if I missed the pattern. You don't challenge laws like that. I'm glad that girl didn't miss, too, because if she did I think all of the white tiles would've fallen away and we would've all floated into darkness, our only points of bearing being the red tiles, suspended on their infinite towers of turtles.

Time travel is possible. I spent thirty minutes in that store, but my smile stretched back thirty years.