I remember this story like it was yesterday. In 1992, I was in the third grade when we had two people, a man and a frazzled woman, visited our school to talk about the art of decorative concrete installations. An odd thing to talk to third graders about? Well, maybe, but not the way it was presented. You see, it was presented like so. I remember what the two people said with perfect clarity:

Gather round me children, and listen to this! Do I have a grand jackhammer? Check. How about my goggles? Yep. Got my giant and majestic booming carton of shot blasters? Check check chewy now. Got my scrapper? Yes! You bet. Betty Du Bet! (The children in the class laughed at this line). Yes mister, I’m all set to visit a very special stained concrete Virginia beach facility that’s been called perhaps the best on planet Earth, and if I may be so bold, the entire world–at least the concrete universe. It’s called decocreteva.com, and they’re quite known all across the land for doing super-duper installations of decorative concrete systems all through the south and deep, especially Virginia . So very swell, they make even Bob Vila blush. (I am not quite certain that the third graders know who Bob Vila was, so I doubt they got this reference.) He was always the grand czar of these types of things. Let me see again. Do I have my grand floor grinder? Check. Got my demolition hammer? Bop! Got my big box of nails? Yes, I do. Welp, time to go then, isn’t it. I am very ready to take a gander at the place because I’ve heard so much about how grand these workers really are.

That was what the two people said, verbatim, in fact. Odd that I remember it. Yes, but, hey, stranger things have happened. Much, much stranger things.