TGIF?
Really?
Of course I know that was yesterday; My calendar isn't broken, I wind it daily.
Anyway, I was making a point. About Friday to be specific.
Here's a little secret. It's about me; when I was a kid I used to like school days better than weekends. Kinda weird huh? Well let me explain. We lived 8 miles outside of town. I only knew two kids who lived out in my area.
The one cool thing was there were lots of trails to ride my bike, and plenty of interesting places to hang out and write, including an old pit rumored to have been dug out for a swimming pool. I don't know that it really was, but it was a great place to light fireworks, and in the winter it became nice ice pond. Or at least what would have been the deep end became an ice pond. I've been known to skate off the deep end on occasion.
Not yesterday. Not Friday. Especially not a Socal Friday. We hear the crazy stories you foreigners tell about "snow" and "ice," but it's only a legend on a weather map. We can look out any windows on any Friday and know you're liars.
Proof you're a liar.
As a kid, I experienced the white fluffy death falling from the sky. Pure and innocent in color, but blanketing the world with a cloying stillness. Worse for me, it usually lasted just long enough to close school and take a picture. By 10am I could slide out into the brown muck and make a mudman. Woo Hoo! It was like the opening passage of The Cat in the Hat, but without the "we." I had no Sally.
I know, I know, collective "awwww." Pity my pathetic boyhood now.
Keep going.
A little more…
Yes, yes, sad lonely Robby…
Ok…that's enough. I good to go. Pity quotient full for the week.
School days were when I hung out. That’s where I learned to study people, and experimented in socialization. Yeah, there was that school thing with teachers and grades and cliques, but there were hallway adventures and lunchroom romances. In high school, if you couldn't find excitement inside, you could always slog outside, endure subzero weather and shiver with the smokers. It didn't matter if you smoked, your frozen breath drifted up like cigarette plumes, just like candy cigarettes as gradeschoolers, but with the added fun of frostbite. Smokers were relegated to a small cliff plot called "the hill." Everyone inside sneered at the huddled masses out on the hill. If you were a smoker on the hill, you must be a stoner as well. So sayeth the kids who took their cars off campus to light up. Some things never change, even after school.
Others do. Now, I work at home and Fridays are my day off. My day to catch up with chores that stack up like cord wood during the week. Oh, and I pay bills. Yes that's right, if you're going to come out and rob Rob, Friday is the night to molest the mailbox. Ok, maybe not. If you're going to molest it, just knock on the door, I'll give you a key...
I also take time to write and forage for groceries. That's my Friday night. When I say "write," I mean more social writing. I go to the local plaza mall, and sit out on the fountain in front of the theater. I watch the people pass, and work things out on paper. It's my chance to be amongst the crowd without being part of it. My yellow note pad is my sketch book for dialogue, people, and the oddities of life. I go with a project to work on, but usually find myself distracted and writing about the world around me. It's all fine, I can use it any time in some other project. Character studies keep like canned goods. People are pickles. Yup. They have a good crunch too. You heard it here first.
At the plaza, there's usually a live band, bad coffee, and wound up teenagers. So after an hour or two I'm ready to leave or drive my pen through the skull of the next screaming debutante. Ok, my plaza isn't that nice. I don't see many debs. Then again, I'm not up to date on teenage girls anymore; how many tattoos disqualifies deb standing? I suppose lying on your back could ruin deb standing too. They don't do that in the plaza though. It was just an observation. I can't tell: there's no longer a hill to separate the social climbers from the whores.
After social studies, I walk to agriculture and buy groceries, Then I drive home. It's my "big night" Kind of boring huh? You know what though? I like it.
So yeah, I'll stick with TGIF. It's my unwind day.
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