Setting trends...

Friday, April 15, 2011

I had known for a long time that this was likely to be a day that I would have to schedule off. It was the day of Heidi’s senior show. She’s just completing her degree from Kent State in Visual Communication and Design and like all the seniors in the program…only ten or so had made the cut…would be displaying some of their creations for potential employers, family and friends. It was a really big deal and something for which I couldn’t afford to be late. With the traffic so crazy on I271 south at the I480 interchange, I knew we’d have to be on the road before five to get to Kent by 6 p.m.

We made it with 5 minutes to spare and spent the evening talking to old friends and reveling in the creative excellence of our daughter…she’s quite talented and extremely hard working. The food fare…a baseball theme…offered some of the most tasteless hot dogs I’d ever had. I found out later they were some kind of vegetarian thing…well…there were some mixed in and that’s probably what I’d speared. I had it without the bun and loaded up on the raw vegetables in an effort to be true to the paleo diet principles (I’m almost sure they had ballpark dogs in the Paleolithic era…though condiments were limited).

We went to the Wine Bar where Jason was working after the show to get something more palatable. I ended up eating a burger with some kind of vegetable and we had an interesting conversation about the definition of a hipster. “A hipster is someone who wears flannel and rides a bike,” one of Heidi’s friends who had been at the senior show said as a way of explanation. “Well then I’m totally a hipster. I wear flannel quite regularly throughout the winter and I ride a lot of bike,” I said.

Jason was sure I was not a hipster…and didn’t want to be. He told me that hipsters ride one-gear bicycles…mine has 16…and so I didn’t meet that particular criteria. Another person in the group said hipsters are always trying to follow the latest trend…followers of sorts…and concluded that, “you’re more of a trend setter than a follower, Mr. Rolf.” He’s right about that.