There’s only one thing I have to be on time for anymore: making it to the bathroom. I used to have to be on time for work, and on and off over the years I took my grandkids to school, or picked them up, or both, so I had to be on time for that. But there’s no clock that scans a card now, and my youngest grands are in high school and don’t need a ride.
Well, okay, I volunteered to pick them up after their inexplicably early start of their high school day and subsequent ridiculously early release. I don’t have to, because they could walk, but I want something to do, and a little after two in the afternoon is much better than a little after three or four of previous grades. And most importantly, it’s time I can spend talking with them, no matter how brief. But even doing that, everything is ultimately downhill.
I spent a lot of time trudging uphill, and it was mostly fun. Not sure when I reached the top, but it seems to me that I’m now on the other side, fighting gravity in reverse. And I tell you, the trail is uniquely precarious. The obstacles are no longer above me in plain sight, but obscured by my knobby knees as I try not to stumble. It vividly reminds me of when my family and I walked up to an olden castle in Germany, and then walked back down to where our car was parked, seemingly miles away, and we were exhausted. It was a Volksmarch, I was told, a pastime, a hobby, and we got a little metal boot at the end as a reward, or an award, or a commemoration, something like that.
As much as I enjoyed exploring the ruins (there were carved inscriptions in the walls dating back to the 18th century) I never again folk-walked anywhere. I prefer that others do that and film their destination, so I can learn about it in a documentary. Well, except for dinosaurs. I would dig in Montana to my last day. I’d probably have to take a triple dose or more of Glucosamine, yet I’d do it, stretched out on the ground and digging through the sediments with a rock hammer, dental picks, and paint brushes.
But there is only one kind of downhill that I lately have to be concerned about. My granddaughter, Sneaks, moved back in with us, and like last time, I moved my office into the garage. She has a job, and she has her own car, so I don’t have to be on time for her. However, it seems I need to start a sort of Sheldon Cooper bathroom schedule about showers.
The other night—I’m not sure of the time but it was dark out—I had to pee. After rushing from the garage I discovered my wife was taking a shower in the master bathroom, so I rushed faster to the small bathroom in the hall and found my granddaughter taking a shower. I sprinted back to the garage and leapt out the side door, and just barely avoided wetting my pants. It wasn’t until I was finished that I realized I had been peeing uphill. Not a hill, really, just the upward incline of the narrow swath of grass between the fence and the east outer wall of my abode. But liquid will always run downward, so back in the garage I checked and found that my shoes were not muddy with grains of wet sand. I’m sure it was close.
So yeah, I need to establish a schedule for them or at least a promise that they will not be in the bathrooms at the same time for any reason, ever. They have phones. They can text each other.
