Last week it was little kids and a red rubber ball that got me thinking about childhood, and this week it was highwaters. Yes, highwaters. Don’t know what highwaters are? That’s when your pants are a bit too short, rising up on your ankles so a couple inches of sock peek out to the daylight, wave at the world and cause you no end of embarrassment. If you wear highwaters, you can’t walk three inches without someone remarking, “What time you expecting the flood, dorkasaur?” I thought of this one day while wearing an older pair of pants that looked a millimeter too short for my taste. Fine by fashion standards, but you can’t help but be insecure as the memories of schoolyard razzing comes rushing back. “Mom, why’d you hem ‘em so short!” I nearly changed as I’ve worked too hard in this life for one single reason: to never be caught in highwaters again.

There we were at the Flagler College end-of the year picnic, showing off my little 4-month-old baby to co-workers and handing her around to people who had passed the 43-question test (with essay) we require before you can handle little Amelie. My eyes became transfixed on a group of kids in the corner of the yard, all hootin’ and hollerin’ while blasting a little red ball at each other trying to take someone’s knee cap off. “That’ll be you soon,” somebody said, noticing my gaze as I bounced the baby. I stared starry-eyed and muttered, “yeah.” And then it occurred to me, “no.” He didn’t mean me! He meant that will be Amelie one day. She will be out there playing, whoopin’ it up with the other kids, and by the size of her, beating them up and stepping on them with her massive size 62 shoes that are usually worn by circus bears to keep their snaggly toenails from tearing up the carpet. He meant her, not me! But I wanted to be out there with them … in the mix … whoopin’ it up … gettin’ crazy … gettin’ grass stains on my pants … messin’ up my hair … rolling in the grass until I itched so bad I thought my skin would fall off. Not her. Me! Look at ‘em. It’s summertime. Daylight savings time is back. The air is warm. The grass is thick and there’s playin’ to do. Lots of it. I wanted the […]

I had to check it twice, even three times, just to see if my eyes were deceiving me. They’ve been known to do that, you know. Once I mistook a plastic bag in a field for a rabbit smoking a cigarette on a Harley Davidson. But this was real. This was no fraud of my imagination. The headline on the Internet, from a respectable news source, honestly said: “Geologists Find Ancient Worm Feces.” Life was so much easier when I was just seeing imaginary biker rabbits. Reality is much harder to deal with. THE STORY (as reported by The Associated Press): “Swedish geologists have found fossilized feces from a worm that lived some 500 million years ago, media reports said Wednesday.” The mind takes off like a drag racer after reading that. So many questions. So many things wrong with that one sentence. If you took out the only sane part — “… said Wednesday” — it would be like removing graphite rods from a nuclear reactor, and that concoction of absurdities would quickly produce a chain reaction. Newspapers and computers across America would spontaneously combust!

I’m not cheap. That’s not the reason I tinker and come up with odd solutions to obvious problems. I’m not lazy, either. Most of the time it takes far longer to do it my way than the way anyone else would — throw it out and start over. And it’s not like I’m trying to save room in the landfill. Yet, there I was, cramming myself under the passenger seat of my Jeep, replacing a spring that broke, which causes it to slide forward and back like an amusement park ride. I had created a wire contraption that would hold it in place … hopefully. Why not just get a new spring? I don’t know! And there I was calling my brother to ask if the welder was working. “Whyyyyy?” he asked in his goofy, defensive sing-song, not wanting to commit to an answer until he knew it wouldn’t suck him into a bottomless pit of work.

The headline on the Wall Street Journal technology section read, “Secrets of the tech-Savvy Traveler” and I realized we had lost the war to the machines. Actually, it runs deeper than that. We have lost the war to work. Nowhere are we safe from work. Not at home. Not on vacation. Not even in the bathroom. Technology is such that we can take it with us everywhere, and probably to the grave, where I’m sure we can do it just as effectively, and maybe quicker. “60 Minutes” just ran a piece called “Working 24/7,” and it said Americans work more hours than anyone on the planet, including the Japanese. And the Japanese used to work until one of their feet would fall off.

I’ve been thinking about the avian flu recently, and it’s not for the reason you might expect. I’m not in the least bit afraid of it, which is exactly my concern. I’ve read all the stories, and how there is the potential to infect vast swaths of society. Chicken sneezes can wipe us off the face of the planet, and it’s no joking matter. People around the world are dying. Sure, we can debate whether it is as serious a threat as it’s being made out to be, or that in comparison to other viruses and diseases, it is a flyspeck on the windshield of what we should be worrying about. But one point that can’t be argued, and this leads to my real concern, is that no one will ever take seriously something called the “bird flu.”

No bats in the belfry — I have squirrels in the attic. Thought it was trolls for a while there, but it’s the bushy-tailed, nut-eating rodents who have invaded my rafters. At least one that I know of, and boy can he make a racket. Apparently he has a crash derby set or a jackhammer. I know it’s a squirrel because I climbed up there the other day and spotted him. There he was, not at all frightened to see me. In fact, he looked more offended by my presence. “Who the heck are you?” he seemed to be saying. “What are you doing in my house with shoes on?”

… and then a giant crack tore through the land, ripping across the earth like a slithering snake, swallowing everything in sight. The sound was thunderous, and people ran while it swallowed houses and convenience stores. But one man did not have time to react. He stood there unaware, eating a smoked sausage, and lost his footing before toppling into the abyss, never to be heard from again. My brother had been swallowed by the wedding planning chasm of doom. Sadness swept the land. My, it’s mighty good to have been married so long ago, and so far removed from wedding planning. Not that I didn’t enjoy getting married. Who doesn’t enjoy an infinity of planning and spending more money than the GDP of Paraguay, all so you can say, “I do”? Then you stare mouth-watering while guests devour food you won’t have time to touch.

Taxasaur — A prehistoric beast who comes every spring to devour your money after chasing you through a twisting maze of complexity and impossible-to-understand bureaucratic legalese. The Taxasaur is tedious and tenacious, taking no prisoners and wearing a thick armor made up of forms called the “1040ES” and the super protective “Unrecaptured Section 1250 Gain Worksheet.” Wo! “Unrecaptured” doesn’t even make sense.