A very extraordinary afternoon

My very extraordinary contraband.

No one could possibly be more upbeat than Boston College's James A. Woods, S.J. No matter when you meet him, and you say hello, how are you, he responds the same way: "Extraordinary. Very extraordinary."

 Literally.

I was thinking of Father Woods today as I romped around Natick Center. In order, here are the extraordinary things that occurred:

1. An amazingly substantial slice of pizza lay at the foot of the Henry Wilson plaque commemorating a tree he planted on Natick Common (Wilson, 18th vp of the US of A under Ulysses S. Grant, lived in Natick, where he was a shoemaker). It was so large that it wouldn't totally fit in my extraordinarily-sized jaws. Nevertheless, I consumed most of it.

2. In a very extraordinary coincidence, I ran into (literally) my neighbor Olivia and her mom Carol outside of Olivia's martial arts studio. Probably not a good idea, because she's nearly a junior black belt and might have tried some complicated move on me.
Then I ran into (again literally) an extraordinarily tall, thin and elegant woman who no doubt did not appreciate my dirty, bulky body ramming into her cashmere wrap. Indeed, I nearly knocked her over.

3. I continued to make Mom extraordinarily annoyed by cantering (literally) through the rest of the busy square. Like it was my fault she didn't wear her running shoes?

4. Back at the town common, to which I dragged my slowpoke mother, I rooted around for more pizza. Instead, I found a bone-shaped tag belonging to a pup named Rafe. Then, the jackpot: a squeaky ball. An immediate attack followed, during which I practically impaled the thing on my canines. Yet  it did not suffer instantaneous destruction. And that is very extraordinary indeed.