what you see on the way to work

I take a basically identical route every day.  It's selected for safety and attractiveness and not so much for distance - I think I could cut some of the mileage but why would I want to do that cause hey, bicycling!  I check out the houses that line the streets as I pedal along with the kind of mild interest sheep reserve for movement of the clouds.

There's this one pretty house which has hands sculptures visibel through a window.  At first I thought it was a Halloween display that no one had taken down but there they were day after day, about five hands reaching up with veins exposed on some, bones on others.  I finally stopped one day when I saw a guy outside the house.  I asked about the hands in the window.  Initially suspicious, he immediately brightened when I did not ask for money or attempt to rob him.  It turns out that he was (is now retired) a hand surgeon and those were his collection of surgical hand models that he still likes to look at and display.

Then there's the house with the big picture window out front.  The window is unusual in that it is floor to nearly ceiling, huge.  The owners have a sofa with it's back to the window and this provides some privacy.  One day I glanced over as I rode past and saw this fabulous tableau vivant - there was a little girl, perhaps three years old crouched down behind the sofa with both hands covering her mouth and her shoulders hunched up as she tried not to laugh.   Visible beyond the sofa was an adult walking back and forth calling and peering around.  I told this story to an acquantance-mother:

some-mom:  Oh my.  You didn't stop and tell them?
me:  What?
some-mom:  Did you stop to let the parent know where the child was hiding?
me:  Ummm, no!  I mean, that would be telling, right?
some-mom:  What if she didn't know where the child was?
me:  [patiently] Well then she'd have to ask for a hint I guess.

You do all see, I hope, that a bicyclist pulling up to a door in the midst of a game of hide and seek you were playing with your kid to tell you that the kid was behind the sofa, would be outrageously creepy?