My review of the Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band concert in Minnesota 6/11/06
My kids and I went to the pet store to get dog food earlier today. I ended up buying them a guinea pig. On the way home, the guinea pig got stuck under the car's floorboard and the kids burst into drama-king and -queen tears and howls.
I pulled into the gas station on Diamond Lake Road and Lyndale, got down and ripped up the carpet and a chunk of plastic from the passenger side, both kids bawling, "LeBron is dead, LeBron is dead," and we haven't even had the thing out of the store for ten minutes. Nice.
I knelt down and stuck my hand in the hole in the floor. I could feel his warm fur. He squeaked. He was wedged between the gear shift and the back of the grill, and I was afraid that if I drove, I'd kill him. And I don't know about you, but I've had it with guinea pig funerals.
When I brushed my fingers over his foot, it was no big deal. I did what any good American would have done in that situation: I grabbed the scruff of his back with everything I had, because guinea pigs are quick and because I didn't want to see another dead thing and because I wanted to see my kids happy, and when I pulled him out, the kids' cries of despair turned to cries of joy.
I sat up, sweaty but weirdly not shaken -- like a guardian angel or two was looking over me. I held the guinea pig in my arms, and stroked the part of his back where I'd ripped out a clump of his fur.
He purred.
He was freaked, but OK.
There was fur all over the car and all over my sweatshirt. I started up the car and drove off and let the sunshine spray in the windows and pretty much felt the way that guinea pig in Minneapolis felt yesterday afternoon, and the way this great new band in St. Paul made me feel last night:
Reborn.
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