Dancing on the DC1100

For some reason, I've been walking around with this old punctuation/grammar thing in my head that I read about somewhere (probably reader's digest) about how easy it is to mess up the meaning if you put punctuation in the wrong place - the example was "Eats, shoots and leaves." Of course, the sentence is supposed to be describing a Giant Panda bear rather than gunslinger, but the real puzzle to me is why I've been carrying this bamboo munching panda around in my head for a week like a sidekick to a guilty conscience. After all, pandas aren't that concerned with anyone else's business. They aren't into your business or mine - they just go about their jobs (presumably stripping bamboo and eating it, shoots and leaves all) as methodically as possible, and hardly give us the time of day.

Then why is it, I suggest, we find panda's so darn fascinating? They aren't near as interesting as your average person, for example. For one thing, pandas only come in your standard black and white models. Very little variation there. People come in so many different colors that even my children can't agree on the appropriate word to describe the shade of peachy-tan-brown of their skin. God forbid you should enter the discussion after they start to label the new color that creeps up their arms and legs in the summer time. All they know is that mommy is definately on one end of the spectrum, and daddy is on the other. They run the sliding scale in between, depending on sun exposure and which one of us they like best at the moment.

But people are fascinating for another reason too. We DO things. Really funny, unexpected things. Just yesterday, as we were driving out of town through that mess of construction traffic that seems to have been going on forever, we passed the obligatory hunk of orange machinery. The kids don't even look anymore, but out of a practiced mother habit, I looked to see what new and interesting thing I could point out on the construction site to keep them interested. My husband was driving, so I had the priveledge of staring as I saw two men atop the large orange rig in their brightly colored reflective vests, yellow hard hats in place, talking.

One of the men leaned toward the other as if to say something and then did the strangest thing I have ever seen on a construction site. He began to dance. Not just any dance. It was a jig. No lie - it had to be a jig. OK, so I don't know what a jig actually looks like, but I have seen cartoon renderings of jigs, where the character pumps the hands up and down washboard style and kicks the feet out side to side, sort of rocking back and forth? That was this dance. Right there on top of this DC1100 rig. And he had the biggest smile on his face, like it was the coolest thing in the world, and he just didn't give a flyin' leap if anyone in that long line of traffic saw him. Do you know what his partner did? He started dancing too!

I started laughing, and yanking on my husbands sleeve - "look at that - are those guys DANCING up there?" I swear he never even looked away from the road, never changed his tone of voice, and as if it is the most natural thing in the world he said, "yep. Dancin' on the DC1100."

Now, I don't know why those guys were dancing on the DC1100 - I can only speculate. All I know is that it looked like they were having a good day. It made me think that maybe they really loved their jobs. Maybe they loved building highways, and they were just really happy to be out there on a Saturday morning earning a living making something really big and doing something really cool. Maybe it is really fun to operate that giant machine. Or maybe it is just really fun to have a big orange stage, a great bright yellow and orange florescent costume, and a captive audience. It doesn't matter, I guess. For me, all that matters is that these two cowboys shot that leaf munching panda right out of my head.

Thank you, gentlemen.