Imaginary Horses

It's the middle of August and southern California might be the only place in the country where the weather's beautiful. We used to be the ones with the insufferably hot summers, but the last two years our summer days have been almost--almost cool. Folks are loving it. Me--you know me, I wear a sweater.

Sundays on our block are a good time for the kids to get out and play and for the adults to hang out and talk about whatever, you know, the usual stuff: how to solve the world's problems, who has the nastiest grill, whether or not we should get matching block t-shirts with our names on the back.

I used to wonder why adults did that. Talk, talk, talk was all they ever did. Boring! How could they just stand around and jabber? Why didn't they ride imaginary horses like the rest of us?