It’s been super-warm in these parts lately, thirty degrees above normal temperature, and this suits most people just fine. But it always reminds me of global warming, and the nasty storms it produces in late January through early March. The above picture is meant to be ironic. I happen to like shoveling snow, it’s much more Zen and calming than mowing the grass.
Thank you to whomever nominated me for Five Star Friday (though I think I know who it was). It is weird and somewhat humbling, suddenly seeing a 200% rise in your daily traffic. Please go and read the other entries, especially if you are a blogger yourself. Just like most great authors are great readers, most good bloggers click liberally. I wish that I could write that effectively and concisely more of the time.
Tonight I caught the second half of the girls’ game between my high school and our arch rival. That in and of itself wouldn’t be weird, but I saw it on ESPN3, a national streaming video channel. It was being held in my high school gym, a place I never went for a game as a student, just a couple of dances, concerts, and graduation (going stag to all, natch.) The building itself dates from the 1920s, I believe. The green and white felt banners still line the sour-milk brick walls, albeit with a few more numbers on them. The cheerleaders, the hastily-magic-markered signs for Pep Club and Tri-Ship. But the students all look the same, through I think there are fewer of them. My graduating class was just over a thousand kids. Since the ceremony was held in the gym, we couldn’t all be on the stage at the same time, so there was restaurant seating: 5 and 7:30pm, and you had no guarantee of walking with any of your friends: girls in white formal dresses, boys in white-jacketed tuxedos, both with red rose boutonnières. I was thin and pasty with too much hair in the few pictures I have of that evening.
A handful of years ago, at my 20th high school reunion, they took us on a tour of the school, in which I hadn’t been since the final day of my senior year. The gym still looked imposing. The thing is, with that big of a place, you’re never really needed anywhere: there are always plenty of kids to fill up the wooden benches in the gym, or the seats in the theater. Now that I root for my own kids in sports, I finally feel like the crowd is better because I am there. To be honest, back then I certainly did need to be seen at sporting events anyway, I was too busy singing.
Moving to a completely different part of the world, I had occasion to call the Hawaii Historical Society today, and it was all I could do to avoid peppering the nice woman with jokes and questions about how cold or hot it was, because she must have to deal with that kind of crap from the contiguous forty-eight ALL THE TIME. Be. Professional. Hugh. Because if the positions were reversed, she’d be asking you a bunch of Hoosier questions like…um…like…. Well, maybe there aren’t any, but my point is made.
