I’m eating lunch, sitting on a bench in the park blocks downtown.  A group of school children — maybe age 10 — a few girls and a couple of boys come running up — pacing past the two adults that are heading with them.

“Teddy!  Teddy!  We Love you, Teddy!”

A very strange comment, I don’t know what it means.  I look around.  And again with “Teddy!  Teddy!  We Love you, Teddy!”  And I see that they are running up to the statue of Theodore Roosevelt riding his horse.

I admit to not having loved Teddy Roosevelt at that age, or any age, and am not sure I would have been as enthralled by a statue of him.  I do not believe that they ran up to old Abe Lincoln a couple blocks down in the same manner.  Anyway, one boy extols to the other boy that the Art Museum has pictures of naked women in it — though he reamins a unimpressed or unmoved — vaguely familiar territory if I had to try to place myself back to that age.

Later in the day, I’m on the Max train, riding past the stops in Old Town.  There is a similar group of kids, age I’d guess 14, goofing off.  One boy mock dry-humps another boy for the amusement of the others in the group, and for reaction from the crowd.  I am staring blankly out the window, and they all wave and grimmace at me and flash wide grins and thumbs up signs, conferring that they know I saw a mock dry-hump.  I keep a faceless expression.  It occurs to me that a few years ago they might have ran after the Teddy Roosevelt statue, and that the kids running after that statue will be in that other situation.  Strange world.

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