You can feel it slamming shut. Not the heat. Oh, no. Certainly not the heat. It keeps coming. Rolling up on you. Getting under your clothes. Taunting you — “Shrivel like a raisin, wimpy boy!” I’m talking about the end of the summer. It’s coming. The intense heat of August is one of the signs — that the slow days and the easy times are just about over. School is about to start. Holidays are on the horizon. The good life is about to pick up the chairs and put out the “Closed ‘til next season” sign. Have you noticed them? The signs? Here are a few I’ve been seeing: • My summer to-do list now stretches to two pages — Nothing says the end of summer like an unfinished to-do list. Mine is yellowed with this written across the top: “Complete before June … OR HEAT WILL KILL YOU!!!”
A final goodbye to my geriatric paper maps
I threw away car maps the other day. Maps! Threw them away. It took great strength and effort to do it. But they’re gone. They were buried deep down in the glove compartment. I had been searching for an air pressure gauge. Instead I found a year’s supply of fast food straws. Enough crumpled napkins to sop up Lake Erie. And maps. Lots of maps. Maps of St. Augustine. Maps of Florida. Maps of the southeast. Maps of the Civil War and of the Lewis and Clark expeditions. Maps of Kenya and the original map Columbus used on his way to the New World. It had a doodle of a sinking ship and a seagull with this note: “Hoping this wasn’t bad idea. Pickup milk on the way home.” Frustrated when I didn’t find the air gauge, I started stuffing everything back in. Including the faded, crumpled maps. Then I paused.
‘Teen Beach Movie’ and a little daddy endurance
So, I have seen the regular version. And I have seen the sing-along version. And I have seen the dance-along version. And if there was a smell-along or a 3-D interactive video game with hip-degrading properties, I’d probably have seen that, too. I have the songs stuck in my head. I have talked about my favorite characters. Hair styles. Outfits. Surfers vs. bikers. How makeup could stay on perfectly in summer humidity.
Listening to wisdom from a babbling mountain stream
There’s a little mountain stream outside of Blowing Rock, N.C. It’s down a winding road with a grade so steep it will rip the gears out of a transmission. When you drive that winding road, your vehicle groans and curses and threatens to leave you stranded. This stream runs beside a cabin. If your transmission holds out, you can make it there. You can sit on its porches beside the stream and listen to the water. It talks to you. You should do this. A Carolina mountain stream has much to say. But you have to take the time to sit and listen. To take in its wisdom. To hear what it’s trying to tell you.
You know you’re a true Floridian when …
And now it’s time to play another game of, “You know you’re a true Floridian when …” This week’s theme is: Mosquitoes! Oh yes, something we all know about. If you’re a real Floridian, you’ve spent most of your life covered in red welts and scratching like a deranged dog. You’ve probably asked a mosquito to drive you home after one too many. Some of your cousins are even mosquitoes.
Making sense of Sea Monkeys
It was an incredible amount of pressure. I was home alone for the night. My wife and child were in Orlando with friends. I was ready to kick back on the sofa and wait for my mother to call and suggest PBS shows I should watch: “Brian, the 12-toed Australian sea sloth is on at 9. You should really watch it!” The phone did ring. It wasn’t my mother, though. It was my wife and child. They had something important they needed me to do. My evening was shattered. No relaxation. I was on … Sea-Monkey duty!
Thoughts on business travel and wonks in Washington D.C.
I’ve always said St. Augustine is the Bermuda Triangle of Florida because you get in and can’t get out. Not that anyone’s trying. It’s the perfect place to be stuck, and you always count yourself lucky when you return to a place like this. That’s especially true when you go to a conference in, say, the nation’s capital. I love traveling. Especially to a city like Washington D.C. There are monuments everywhere. Museums that sell astronaut ice cream. And a plethora of people who can speak cogently about Chapter 13, Section 12, Item B, Paragraph 42 of the Affordable Care Act. They do! Everywhere you go! And boy, it sure is interesting! It makes you realize the best part of St. Augustine: Coming home. But as always, I learned a few things while away, and I thought I would share:
Father’s Day … and my face on a clay pen cup
“See, dad?” she said. “It’s your stubble. See? It looks just like you.” “Yeah, alright,” I said. “Look at that. Just like me.” It didn’t look like me. It didn’t look ANYTHING like me. Actually, I wish I looked like it. This clay pen holder my daughter made me. A friend down the street … well, her mother has a kiln and some clay. How cool is that? They made Father’s Day presents. Clay cups with faces on them. To hold pens. You’ve never officially been a kid until you’ve made your dad a clay cup with his face on it. The first recorded Father’s Day cup with a face on it dates back to 10,000 B.C. There was also a figure made out of macaroni and a drawing of a race car that read, “Dad drive fast,” with a police car chasing him.
Four cats, eight kitty litter pans and one night in the hospital
This is the list she gave me. There were two copies of it. Each was hand-written in cursive. One for my brother and one for me. It detailed everything that needed to be done with the four cats and her dog, Lady. It detailed things to be done around the house. All while she had a quick surgical procedure and spent a night in the hospital for observation. “Observation” is code for a nurse telling my mother, “Ms. Thompson, you need to stop walking around the halls and touching things. Please go back to bed and rest so we don’t have to taser you.”
School’s out: That means no more high-pressure lunch-making
If you’re like me, you’re wondering what to do with this gift. It’s like coming across a crumpled $20 bill on the sidewalk. Think of the possibilities! I’m rich! I can go buy some gold! Only this isn’t money. It’s time. Found time! I’m rich! Mine — and maybe yours — comes courtesy of elementary school letting out for summer. One of my major parental responsibilities — I was removed from math homework when we started getting notes like this: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Thompson, your daughter’s math work has taken a turn for the worse. For instance, 8+8 is not B” — one of my big parental duties was packing my daughter’s lunch each morning.