unrelated observations

I went to the grocery store across the way just now. The building the grocery store is in also has BWH offices in it and is built on a steep hill, so you get to the grocery store by going up an escalator to the second floor.

Anyway, I was coming down the escalator, and at the bottom of the up escalator was a Chinese dad and his two kids, who were probably 2 and 4. Apparently neither one had gone up an escalator before. Dad starts up the escalator, and the kids stand at the bottom looking unsure. Dad walks back down the couple of steps he's gone up, reassures the kids in Chinese, picks up the younger one and puts him on a step. Younger kid starts going up. Dad starts going up, but older kid still isn't sure about this. Dad comes back down again, reassuring older kid; meanwhile younger kid has gotten 2/3 of the way up and is looking back down because nobody else has come up yet and what's going on here? At that point I had gotten to the bottom myself and had to go on about my errands. It was a very cute interlude, though.

In completely unrelated news, generally I hate text-message shorthand and all that sort of stuff, but I find most of this site absolutely hilarious.