A few years ago, Katie and I went to the Topsfield Fair with our friend Nick (an event that my mother would call, “a slice of life,” a description she reserves for things like bowling leagues and other congregations of people that are rather–how do I put this without sounding derisive?–enthusiastic about specific, odd things. For the people of the Topsfield Fair (and for the duration of our time spent roaming the different pens), this specific thing happened to be: farm animals. There’s much more to be said about out time at the Topsfield Fair, but it isn’t the focus of this story–it’s actually just the lead-in for the opening scene–and so I’m going to set down this string and polish off this parenthetical tangent and maybe finish this run-on sentence).