Pudgy Indian

One day, about a year and a half ago, before Rhonda and I had met, I was taking Felicia on one of our many trips downtown on the bus. We were heading for KBOO, and went straight to Burnside and started heading for the bridge. I was excited.

"I want to show you something. It's really cool. It's something you've seen many times, but you haven't seen like this."

She pretended to be interested just to please me, then her interest became lackluster. We started heading past Big Pink, Portland's tallest building. I made her stop beside it.

"How many times have we walked past Big Pink?" I asked her.

"Lots," she answered.

I turned her back to the building and she faced the street. "I'm gonna teach you something about perspective," I told her. "Sometimes there are amazing things right before our very eyes. We pass them often. Don't think much about them...until we change our perspective a little and maybe we'll see something fantastic."

I held her shoulders and told her to lean back and look up.

She was completely awed by something she never paid attention to before. Her look of surprise and amazement is one I will never forget. Something she had seen many times...all it took was to look up. Maybe next time we'll look down, lay on our backs and look at the clouds, look at what's under the deck, find friends in people we hardly paid attention to...