Checking in - Friday story - frightening trees

Ah, it's Friday, and all is well, As Julian of Norwich said: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well,” It's a good theology. And it's been a reasonably good week, relatively uneventful, and I've been successful at living it a day at a time. That's good, too. And I've lived with the winter, rather than against it. I wanted to tell a story today, perhaps a childhood memory, as I did in the very early posts on this blog...but then I stumbled upon this remarkably cute little girl telling a story of her own, so I am going to share it here. I'm not that cute, and my stories aren't that creative.

I'll be sure to check in next Tuesday evening after I have my CT scan, and, hopefully results, if not sooner. For now, I'll let you enjoy this video...and...well...one more thing...speaking of winter, there is a line in somebody's poem that says..."if winter comes, can spring be far behind?" I dont remember who wrote the poem, or the title, but I remember that line from a High School English class. Actually, that's not how I remember that line. I remember that line because of this... I was working in a fast food joint (Sandy's Pizza). I was earning a whole $1.60 an hour. No air conditioning...sometimes I worked the counter...sometimes the grill...sometimes I made Pizza, sometimes I did all three simultaneously...it was a small operation that often got quite crowded. Anyway, standing behind the grill by the fryers and Pizza oven for 8 hours one hot August day watching people get off the bus coming back from Jones Beach every 30 minutes where the riders had spent the day frolicking in the cool waves of the Atlantic ocean with their girlfriends, I had a conversation with Vinnie Della Speranza, who worked at Sandy's with me and was also in my High School English class where the teacher, as I recall, made us memorize that poem. Vinnie was not really the kind of guy who quoted poetry. And at that point in my life, I certainly did not either. Vinnie and I were commiserating with each other about how neither of us had the nerve to ask a girl out...how we would both rather be at the beach with a girlfriend than working at Sandy's, and we were both wretched, worthless, and miserably hot and had a full day of work ahead of us, and were already falling behind filling the orders from the crowd waiting for their burgers and pizza. In the midst of a string of profanities that we were offering to each other to sum up our lives thus far, Vinnie turned to me and, looking quite serious, exclaimed, "If winter comes, can spring be far behind?" I laughed for the next six hours.

God bless you for keeping up with my little drama.