Dancing With The Past

I feel silly. Because we're doing something patently touristy.

While the rest of the world engages itself in Abbottabad, Navy SEALS and the death of the mastermind of terror, we're bouncing down a small side road through dusty farmland in Fort Sumner, NM, to see the gravesite of, ahem, Billy the Kid.

And were doing this because I read about it on the Internet, in a Things To Do link. And I like to do oddball things.

So we pull into the graveyard's parking lot and find it's just us and two other people  today  (both men; one a trucker) paying respects to the villainous kid.

And I think we're all embarrassed. Because we're not making contact  And we're waltzing around the graveyard, staying equidistant.

It's easy to dance out of each other's way because the walled compound has sidewalks that meander past  a few other graves, all from about the same time period (late 19th century). So I watch as we all feign interest in those other graves, dipping to read headstones, then swaying on to the next, all waiting for our turn with the famous guy, all staying out of each other's way.

OK. It's our turn. We cha-cha up to the gravesite (fenced-in to protect it from vandals) and read the tombstone (manacled, because it's been stolen twice). We take pictures and, when it's our turn, we sashay out.

And so ends the graveyard ballet.