© Jayson Slade 2010
From time to time this sliding would do a number on my knee caps, a thing I'd regret soon after my college years, but it most certainly took a heavy toll on my jeans right then. Some kids got spanked or grounded because of spills or stains on their clothes. I got in trouble for rubbing the knees out. My dad used to say that his job was to have me at least three complete outfits. "One clean. One dirty. And one being worn. The rest was just extra", he'd say. I had several more than just those three, but they all had one thing in common. The Chinet shards were protruding through the knees like broken cardboard. I'd just have to get used to this.
It was very cool growing up in 1979. Things were calm. I enjoyed school and school work, but at this point school was out for summer and I wasn't always enjoying my time off at home. Home was hot. And I had yard chores to do. It sucked doing yard chores. Luckily, I soon realized that as long as I didn't do too good a job, then I wouldn't usually get very many new assignments. And if I did, at least they'd be about the same as far as their complexity. Very similar to that first time you make it known that you know how to properly load the dishwasher. Soon it just becomes your job. I didn’t want that to happen again. I don't know if my dad caught on to my scheme and just let me slide on the harder stuff or if he might've thought I was just a bit of a tard.
Either way, by having yard work and hating it, I taught myself to became a lackey. I wasn't really a dead beat, but definitely opposed to manual labor of any kind. Probably because it seemed like every time the wind blew in south Mississippi, one of two things would happen. Either 4,387 pine cones would suddenly drop to the ground, almost in unison, or bus loads of limbs would randomly fall from the trees, making the area around our home look like a bad move in Jenga. The problem was, the wind seemed to blow a lot.
I'd drag around the yard cursing elementary variations of profanities in my head about how bad I hated piling up limbs and sticks and pine cones and shit. Dad would come around periodically to relight the fire under my butt and I'd get it in gear enough to troggle through the next section. Usually anytime I could find good reason, I'd create a distraction. One legitimate distraction was always the garden hose. That was an easy fix.
(to be continued)
(to be continued)
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