Friday, June 24, 2005
The days are getting shorter
A couple of days ago was the first day of summer -- a day I would describe as bittersweet in my book, especially as a young person (still in school) but old enough to grasp the concept of days getting longer and shorter. You'd arrive at June 21 or thereabouts and the summer opened up in front of you with limitless potential for doing everything and nothing -- 2+ months of freedom until school started again. Is there anything quite like that "last day of school" feeling, and when in your adult life to you get to experience that? When you quit a job maybe.
I was buying Ella an Icee (nee Slurpee) last week, on Friday, and there was a kid about 12 at the counter, scraping together change from his pockets and his friend's pocket to buy a $1.95 ice cream cone or something. He only had $1.70, but the convenience store dude wouldn't budge. I knew this was the kid's last day of school -- I'd seen his classmates from the nearby junior high at the park where I took Ella. I didn't want him to start his summer on the short end of the stick, so impulsively I gave him my Icee change -- about 50 cents. He was surprised and thankful -- now that's a good way to start a summer, getting unrequested spare change from an "old" dude at the corner store. (Or was it my need to seem cool to today's youth? Let's hope not)
Back to daylight. The summer solstice represents the longest day of the year, meaning each subsequent day for the next six months is getting a bit shorter. The darkness is growing, even as you pursue summer frivolity. A cynical view, certainly one appreciated by the scentifically oriented, but not the masses, I would think. Ah, the dense masses, schlepping down to the shore or going on a family road trip, blissfully unaware that the daylight is slowly slipping through their grasp, even as they try to seize the summer for all it's worth.
God, that last sentence is pompous and ridiculous.
I thought I could come up with a way to transition this blog to a discussion of my childhood OCD tendencies: ranking and rating and counting everything in my room and putting things in "order," keeping track of how many nights in a row I'd slept with my stuffed guinea pig (even going as far as stuffing him in the bottom of my sleeping bag during slumber parties), washing my bike weekly or more often, concocting elaborate Nerf hoop games with stations and records, reading books compulsively and repeatedly, copying sports lists (Heisman winners, World Series champs, etc.) from the encyclopedia, reading the Guinness Book from end to end, etc. Now that I've gotten into the actual writing, I'm not sure I see the connection. Perhaps it has to do with my efforts to exert control over something/anything in my divorced family environment. Almost cliche, but still true I think: when your family life gets pulverized and you don't know how to deal with the harrowing emotions, you seek control over anything, like the order of the baseball cards (by team [in order of preference], and then by position [catcher, pitcher, 1B, etc.] and year and knowing exactly how many you have.
Later in life, maybe focusing on the days getting shorter gave me an illusion of control/power too -- hey, I an aware of the consequences of the earth's relative angle to the sun based on the tilt of its axis! You other people don't care about this, but I know what's happening to my days! I know where those minutes of daylight are going!
Or maybe I was just a nerd...but certainly a nerd with former compulsive/control issues. Where have those gone now? What's changed to make this once freak of order largely indifferent to clutter and chaos? My sock drawer -- organized by color -- is the last vestige of my boyhood behavior tics, or is it? To be considered.
I was buying Ella an Icee (nee Slurpee) last week, on Friday, and there was a kid about 12 at the counter, scraping together change from his pockets and his friend's pocket to buy a $1.95 ice cream cone or something. He only had $1.70, but the convenience store dude wouldn't budge. I knew this was the kid's last day of school -- I'd seen his classmates from the nearby junior high at the park where I took Ella. I didn't want him to start his summer on the short end of the stick, so impulsively I gave him my Icee change -- about 50 cents. He was surprised and thankful -- now that's a good way to start a summer, getting unrequested spare change from an "old" dude at the corner store. (Or was it my need to seem cool to today's youth? Let's hope not)
Back to daylight. The summer solstice represents the longest day of the year, meaning each subsequent day for the next six months is getting a bit shorter. The darkness is growing, even as you pursue summer frivolity. A cynical view, certainly one appreciated by the scentifically oriented, but not the masses, I would think. Ah, the dense masses, schlepping down to the shore or going on a family road trip, blissfully unaware that the daylight is slowly slipping through their grasp, even as they try to seize the summer for all it's worth.
God, that last sentence is pompous and ridiculous.
I thought I could come up with a way to transition this blog to a discussion of my childhood OCD tendencies: ranking and rating and counting everything in my room and putting things in "order," keeping track of how many nights in a row I'd slept with my stuffed guinea pig (even going as far as stuffing him in the bottom of my sleeping bag during slumber parties), washing my bike weekly or more often, concocting elaborate Nerf hoop games with stations and records, reading books compulsively and repeatedly, copying sports lists (Heisman winners, World Series champs, etc.) from the encyclopedia, reading the Guinness Book from end to end, etc. Now that I've gotten into the actual writing, I'm not sure I see the connection. Perhaps it has to do with my efforts to exert control over something/anything in my divorced family environment. Almost cliche, but still true I think: when your family life gets pulverized and you don't know how to deal with the harrowing emotions, you seek control over anything, like the order of the baseball cards (by team [in order of preference], and then by position [catcher, pitcher, 1B, etc.] and year and knowing exactly how many you have.
Later in life, maybe focusing on the days getting shorter gave me an illusion of control/power too -- hey, I an aware of the consequences of the earth's relative angle to the sun based on the tilt of its axis! You other people don't care about this, but I know what's happening to my days! I know where those minutes of daylight are going!
Or maybe I was just a nerd...but certainly a nerd with former compulsive/control issues. Where have those gone now? What's changed to make this once freak of order largely indifferent to clutter and chaos? My sock drawer -- organized by color -- is the last vestige of my boyhood behavior tics, or is it? To be considered.
// posted by Bill @ 9:50 PM 
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Speaking of Nerf-basketball-oriented OCD, I used to have to make 10 free throws in a row on my Nerf hoop before leaving for school or, I was sure, various bad things would happen that day!
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