I remember living this, do not remember writing this. But I didn’t take Mrs. Casey’s geometry class three times without picking up some math skills. Figure about three years written and about twenty lived.- JDW
Got a call last night. Kinda late. 8:30. Late for Mom, for sure. She was so excited. She had just come back from an evening out. She had won four times for a total of $16.25. Her losing streak was over. Bingo!
…..This from a woman on her last legs some sixteen years ago.
Back then, I decided to get a job, mostly for some excuse to just get away from Lawrence Welk and Jeopardy. And Murder, She Wrote. Used to drive Mom crazy to watch Dad try to figure out the murderer. It’s always the guest star, besides it’s a re-run of a show he’s already seen. There’s a reason why a child moves out of the family home. We fly away from the nest at age eighteen or thereabouts. Was reminded at age fifty, when I moved back in.
At Publix, I lasted one day as a bag boy, before being moved to the stock crew. (In the grocery business, apparently that constitutes a promotion.)
Received a raise within weeks of starting the job. I was not a little proud. I was now earning almost as much per hour as a twelve-year-old’s weekly allowance. In a poor neighborhood.
“Has anybody ever gotten a raise so fast before?,” I asked the store manager.
“Nobody ever asked for one that fast before,” he answered.
Working ten hours on a Sunday night – having been promoted yet again – I was approached by the sweetest ten-year-old, Shirley Temple in a Hollister hoodie. She looked around, then looked up at me, with a quizzical smile.
“Are you in charge of all the fruits?,” she asked me. All serious.
“Why, yes, I am.”
“You are one lucky man,” she says. Like an angel.
On my day off, I take my Chocolate Lab for a walk. We argue about who loves it more. Walk deep enough into the woods to see a six-foot rattlesnake and a fifteen-foot alligator. Thankfully on different adventures.
Back home, take a dip in the pool. Swim for a while. I have trained my dog, Major Crime, to do laps with me. He loves to race but he’s not all that fast. If he didn’t cheat, he’d never win.
After brunch, I set out to do my chores, most of which are outdoors. I get my love for landscaping from my Dad. He no longer enjoyed the actual work, ’cause he had done far too much of it in his earlier years. But he liked me to bring a chair outside, so he could sit and supervise. Soon that became too fatiguing. For both of us. Child-abuse can be a two-way street.
I might work around the house until two p.m. After a shave and a shower, I head for my cherry ’90 Mustang convertible. Deep green Seven-Up edition LX. Souped-up 5.0 engine. It’s not a mid-life crisis but I was fifty and I was single. And I was not seventy. Which in this town – Sarasota – means a whole lot. In certain circles I was known as “The Kid.”
A voice rings out. It’s my mother. “Be sure you’re home by five to help with dinner.”
8/30/1925 – 1/17/14