Joe and Mel

The school where I teach is in an old shopping mall. The mall manager is named Joe. He's in his early 60s, and he makes me miss both of my grandfathers.

Joe is in several grown-up Boy-Scout organizations like the Shriners, or maybe the Elks Club. He takes his wife square dancing on Friday night, and gives the teachers here free tickets to the Tonginoxie rodeo.

Usually Joe wears grey slacks and a Miller Security button-down short sleeve work shirt and black dress shoes, but today he came in wearing plaid golfing shorts and a white tank top.

With the dress shoes.

"Gonna be hot today," he told me.

Joe likes hearing stories about my life, and since we didn't have any students in yet, he pulled up a chair and I found all of our pictures on Josh's blog Flickr site.

Mel stopped by shortly after Joe did. Mel is the mall maintenance guy, who likes to grumble about the new mayor, the potholes in the parking lot, the worn out belt on the vacuum cleaner, and his kids who "just don't got no sense some of these days."

Joe and Mel stayed for an hour looking at pictures.

They argued about whether Josh looked better with or without facial hair, whether Anna and I looked alike or not, and which wedding picture they wanted a copy of to hang in their office (they finally decided on the one where we're putting gas in the RAV, still wearing our wedding clothes).

I showed them the pictures from our trip to the Topeka Zoo...Mel said, very seriously, that he had never liked giraffes, because they looked like they were "up to something."

Good times.