I have a problem with wasting time.  (See my previous post.) I have an even bigger problem when it’s my fault. 

On Sunday we had tickets to hear a celebrity panel talk about ethics at Boston’s historic Fanueil Hall as part of the City’s inaugural Hub Week.  We decided to go early and wander around Quincy Market and the waterfront until the event started.  Except I mis-remembered the time, and we arrived more than two hours early.  Peter, to his credit, did not make me feel like a complete idiot.  He didn’t need to; I already felt like a complete idiot.

But talk about turning lemons into lemonade.  We wandered through the Quincy Market area, one of Boston’s most popular tourist sites and one we never visit.  We people watched.  People watched us. 

A group of chattering high school-aged kids approached and asked if they could interview us.  They were in the U.S. from Korea on a cultural exchange.

They asked three questions in excellent English:

1. Where are you from?  That was easy.
2. What is Boston best known for?  My first answer, The Boston Red Sox, didn’t seem to resonate, so we tried the start of the American Revolution, and that answer made them happy.
3. What else is Boston known for?  The Boston Tea Party seemed to work.

Then, giggling like teenagers do, they asked to take our photo. 

We walked the entire market.  We watched street performers.  We laughed over ridiculous signs for sale at one booth.  I almost bought a dishtowel with the warning, “Never laugh at your husband’s choices.  You’re one of them.”  We read the menu at Durgin Park, a restaurant dating back to when Quincy Market was a market and a prime rib dinner cost $13.95. (It's now $49.95.)

And then we went to the event we came for, a panel of famous people discussing things like whether or not we should allow parents to genetically engineer children or whether an “app” that allows people to sell the metered parking space they are leaving to the highest bidder is OK.

Our closets didn’t get their fall change-over and the newspaper didn’t get read.  It didn’t matter.