END OF SUMMER NEEDN'T BE A BUMMER!!!

Just about every weekday morning, me and my husband take our dogs to Forest Park for a little nature walk before work.  Today was no different.  Well, except that today happens to be the last full day of summer and it’s 84 degrees outside and positively GORGEOUS.  Waaaaay too gorgeous to spend it sitting at my desk taking orders from some raving, certifiable lunatic.

Anybody who knows our area of Queens knows that Rockaway Beach is perhaps half an hour from the park (a mere 20 minutes if you manage to avoid every light).  Just straight on down Woodhaven Boulevard!

Usually, after our dog walk, I drop Chris (husband) off at the train station on Crossbay Boulevard,  then I drop the dogs off at home and then I go on to the insane asylum where I earns me bread n’ buttah.

Today, however, on the way to the train station I launch into my FUCK THESE JOBS  routine.  My fella knows this shtick pretty well.  After all, I’ve been performing it for him pretty regularly for nearly 15 years now....

Me: “Come on, honey!  FUCK THESE JOBS!  Let’s just keep goin’ –  drive straight down to Rockaway!  Beat it on down the line!”

Chris sits in stoic silence.  BUT INCREDIBLY, The Dead kick in on the car stereo, WFDU: ‘Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad’.

Me: “Oh, MAN!  HONEY!!!  Just listen to Jerry and the boys, Sweet-Pea!  They WANT us to keep goin’ down the road!  GOIN’ DOWN THE ROAD -  FEELIN’ GOOD!!!” 

Chris: “I’m ignoring you.   Can you tell?”

Me: “Awww – c’mon!  LAST DAY OF SUMMER!  Let’s bang it in – call in sick!! We’ll buy a 6-pack!  Hit a clam bar!  Bonnie and Clyde – that’s me and you, honey!  And the dogs, too!  They can be the Bonnie and Clyde of the dog world!  Look! They already look EXCITED!” (Well, they do.)

Chris: “Lynn, stop it.  You know I can’t do this.”

Me: “You CAN!   Honey, together, we can DO this thing!   What’s to stop us?  These stupid  JOBS?”

Chris: “Yes, that’s right.  These stupid, idiotic, RENT-PAYING jobs.”

 Me: “You know, when we first got together, we did that kinda stuff all the TIME!  If this was THEN, we’d just bang it in.  Gas up the car and be on that boardwalk in NO TIME...”

Chris: “No.  If this was then, YOU’D be collecting UNEMPLOYMENT and instigating ME to fuck with MY job so I could bum around with YOU all day.”

Me (sulkily): “Same difference.”  

Chris: “Yeah, same difference.  Right.”

Me: “Come on…you know it was FUUUN….”

And……BA-DUM!  End of routine!  The hubster exits the car and hops on his train, but not before he buys me a nice iced coffee from Dunkin’ first.  He really is such a good man.

And I’m a bad influence, I know it.  It’s just my nature.  I used to do the same thing all thru school – find a reason to cut out and drag any and all likely suspects along with me.  ‘Cuz let me tell you, if I was still in school, I would NOT be attending on a day as glorious as this one.  Hey, you know what – maybe I’m a GOOD influence!  Ever think of it THAT way????  What the hell is wrong with getting as much enjoyment out of life as possible, I ask you??

So, thoughts of old school daze lead me to recall a poem I wrote back in ’78 or ’79.  I was always writing poetry back then.  Anyhow, I had scrawled this poem on the back of one of my notebooks.   A sullen, cute stoner-guy I use to call ‘Tony Baby’ who sat next to me in homeroom noticed it one day and he asked me if he could copy it onto HIS notebook.  (Well, SURE, Tony Baby!  Blush!  Blush!)

And then, before I knew it, I started seeing MY poem scrawled all over the school.  On notebooks.  On  dungaree jackets.  On blackboards and desk-tops.  In chalk on the sidewalk underneath the bleachers.  ALL OVER THE PLACE!

Following is my poem, entitled simply: “Teacher, Teacher.”

Teacher, teacher – Tell me why

You don’t realize

I’m High.

See, there’s music in my head -

And I can’t hear what’s

Being said.

Even tho’ You’re talking loud,

My brain is soaring

In a cloud.

Ask me a question, you always do –

When I’m stoned, and don’t know

Black from blue…

I pause and I stutter

You think me a fool

But YOU must be one

To work in this school!

So if I’m slow,

And not too clear

In what I say

Or what I hear...

Or, if I look

Like I might die -

Well, teacher,

It’s because

I’m High.

 * * *

At the time, seeing my poem in rampant school-wide circulation gave me a thrill, as did having strangers approach me to ask if I was indeed the “Teacher, Teacher Girl.”    But it also filled me with some degree of terror:  The fear of being exposed as THE ULTIMATE INSUBORDINATE, smearing my mutinous nature all over the freaking school in the form of a poem that exalted the joyous liberation of being out of my mind.

Kinda how I feel when I’m writing this BLOG thing.  Only now I’m all grown-up.  A responsible adult.  Sorta.