Fear Not. The hipster boys are actually quite polite.

You may have heard about the music festival that's starting up here in Texas, down in Bigtown. Well, we here in Littleton have our own, complimentary music festival that runs in concert with The Big One.

As such, Those Darn Kids across the street have a number of big names staying on their floor tonight. None of these people are members of bands I've ever heard of, but I'm assured that they are, indeed, Big Names in the indie-rock, alt-country, mod-punk circuit. Those Darn Kids, who throw an annual party that is almost completely silent despite featuring two live bands and 400 invited guests, are big on those circuits, too.

Which means I get odd knocks on the door now and then.

Tonight it was one of Those Darn Kids with a Big Name in the alt-whatever world. I shuffled to the door in my bathrobe and opened it (the door, not the bathrobe) to find the cute guy from across the street* with a sheepish-looking alt-rocker next to him. The alt-rocker was holding his arm at a funny angle. Turns out he'd sprained his wrist loading Fenders into the band van, and needed ibuprofen, an ice pack, and a more professional wrapping job than the hippies in the crew had been able to provide.

So I dug out an appropriate ACE, fed him ibuprofen, fixed him up a pack of frozen edamame, and told him to rest his wrist for a couple of days, if he could. Turns out they're off for a day or so, then play a big gig at Fred's Friendly Beer Warehouse down in Bigton. He should be able to wield his drumsticks or strum his bass or whatever it is he does (cowbell?) by then.

Sometimes being a nurse is an enormous pain in the ass. Sometimes it makes me giggle once I'm alone and have shut and locked the front door. Those Darn Kids are very helpful, demolishing outbuildings and hauling rock for me, but never before have I been treated with courtly deference by two dreadlocked young bucks while wearing nothing but a cat-snagged bathrobe and Birkenstocks.

*For reals? From a distance of twenty years, since he is exactly one-half my age, I can look at this kid and wonder how he walks down the street unmolested. Golden-brown tan even in the dead of winter, blond dreadlocks, ice-blue eyes. They didn't make 'em like that when *I* was twenty, or if they did, I was too buried in books to notice. We share a birthday, and I refrained from mentioning this year that he was born at the same time I was finishing my senior thesis is sociology. Gracious, it's odd getting old.