Here I am washing dishes after a scrumptious meal of macaroni and cheese with just the cats to talk to. Adella went to Alabama a couple of months ago after daughter Liz injured her hand picking up Big N (Nathaniel). It’s not so much loneliness as it is incompleteness that brings back memories when four of us guys rented a flat on the south side of Corpus Christi. We even had a swimming pool . . . with fish in it. Talk about class!
They were good friends to share a piece of college life with, the kind that tried to overlook a hick from the sticks who’d cut his toenails with a potato peeler, the kind who ignored his plunking on the ol’ banjo because there was no Dina in the kitchen. I believe my roomies would have tolerated the banjo had we had a Dina to cook better mashed potatoes. Though we raved about each other’s grub fixings, extolled our chef skills beyond reality, none of us had really prepared the caliber of meals we bragged about. Even our TV dinners were removed from the aluminum containers and pretentiously served on fine paper china. And speaking of china, did we own a plate or cup that was free of a chip or crack, or that still had some gloss on it? Pretend. Such were the days. Tongue in cheek behavior: ironing our dollar bills to impress the ladies with crisp cash.
When I see today’s younger folks pining over romantic failures, I can only say under my breath, “I’m soooo glad I’m not going through that.” So, here I am washing dishes because I don’t know how to use the dishwasher. I can’t seem to remember how to load the blasted thing. Adella has taken me through Dishwashing 101 two or three times, but somehow I can’t recall how she is able to stuff so much into it. If I randomly put the dishes into the washer I risk . . . something not good. Being random is not cool when it comes to dishwashers. Being random with dishes in the sink is acceptable.
As I was saying, I’m washing dishes and recalling some forty-year-old days. Where did those years go? It is tempting to follow this rhetorical question with a string of trite comments, so worn out they’d sound like the babbling trombone from the teacher in Peanuts, such as, “It seems like yesterday,” or “Time sure passes fast.” Blaa! blaa! blaa! But wait! Why does it seem like yesterday? Since that yesterday we’ve had kids, who are now grown to the age we were when we four stood in the middle of the living room of that flat and watched the water cascade over the flowers on the wallpaper during a heavy rain. In the immortal words of Johnny Cash: “I can’t count the time that I’ve had a cold, . . . and a sore throat, not to mention all the times that I cut my fingers on a sardine can.” Neither can I count the number of cats that have adopted us who ended up buried under the tree in our front yard. Well, I tell you. It’s in our nature to plug in a chronological duration something that can’t change. If it is something worthy of fondness, we smile. If it is painful, we pretentiously smile and bury another cat under the tree.
In the big picture of things I sense that we four roommates in college were just passing through a piece of life, and all that followed colored that brief time in that rundown apartment as something that really didn’t change a thing, like going home on a weekend. The paint is cracked and faded, but from the looks of the rest of the picture, that part is just fine the way it is. No alterations needed. Anyway, excuse me Bill, Gary, and J.D., Adella’s coming home tomorrow.
