I saw a boy riding a bike, thirteen or fourteen, plugged into an iPod, snarly and unseeing and when I moved off the sidewalk so he could more easily pass, he looked at me in his unseeing way and said nothing. The poor creature had not even been taught, or so it seemed, to offer a simple nod of thanks—he had absolutely no skills beyond being able to listen and pedal at the same time.

I saw a tiny tot riding a motorized car while a harried mother moved about in a front yard full of large plastic toys. When the child left his car in the middle of the court the mother said: you can’t leave it there, Dakota, go and get it. But Dakota was already off in another direction and mother was already walking toward the abandoned car. As Dakota, and I, knew she would.

I saw a dog named Steve, the colour of a fox and the size of a rolled up newspaper on a slow news day.

And then I saw hail fall in the garden and thought how odd, until I popped one of the marble sized balls of ice into my mouth—which seemed a perfectly wonderful thing to do on a warm autumn day.