On the multiple uses of literacy

This morning we took a trip to something called a welding rodeo, held at a local technical college. I didn't quite take in all the rules, but there's some sort of challenge presented to several 4-person teams of welders, and they have a few hours to come up with a metal sculpture that meets the challenge. Sort of like Iron Chef, except with real iron, I guess.

Anyway, we thought Wild Thing might enjoy this, since he's interested in fire. (!) And it's always fun to look at big metal sculptures, eh? So, we truck on out only to find that WT can't really be bothered to do more than glance at the sculpture of, say, a gigantic grasshopper, or a giant fish, or a giant manta ray, or what not. Even less interesting were the welders themselves, who were all behind protective enclosures (to shield viewers from sparks, I imagine) and were boring at best, and slightly scary at worst.

But all was not lost! The campus is laid out something like a high school campus, with lots of small single-story buildings built up around a lot of open space. And each of these buildings is labeled with a letter--a large, white letter, standing out clearly on a blue background. These are visible at quite a distance, presumably as a navigational aid.

Or perhaps they are there to entertain children. Because WT obviously believed that the whole reason we were there was so that he could identify every letter on every building. "There's a B! I see TWO B's!" he would cry. Then, turning, he would spot another. "I see a letter S!" which he would then proceed to run towards as though he thought it were made out of ice cream.