Vacation 2016

I was on vacation a couple weeks back and went to my favorite place, Martha’s Vineyard. I enjoyed spending time with my wife and daughter, my in-laws, and a few cousins, aunts and uncles. Unfortunately, my son couldn’t make it due to his work schedule and I missed having him there with us. Despite him not being with us, it was a great week and brought back some memories for me.

Coming over to the island on the ferry, there were a lot of families with young kids and I couldn’t help but think back to when my kids were little and we made the trek over. Both my kids loved being on the boat and we’d either be outside or right next to a window. We’d watch the seagulls floating on the air, keeping pace with the boat and swooping in and grabbing a snack from a passenger’s outstretched hand. We’d talk about what we were going to do, which always included the beach, ice cream, and The Flying Horses. Those were some great times.

My wife and I walked up town our first evening there and got an ice cream. There’s nothing like an ice cream on a summer day. It made me think of my childhood and how special a treat it was to pile all the kids in the car, go for a cool off ride, and get an ice cream at the end. Even if our hands and arms were sticky with melted ice cream, it was worth the two hours or so of cooling off before we went back to the house where the only air conditioning was open windows and a big blue fan. Those were also some great times.

As I sat waiting for the fireworks to start on the 4^th of July, I was like a little kid, sitting and fidgeting, wondering why it was taking so long to start. When I was a kid, the town had our fireworks at the Little League fields. We’d walk up as a family, set out a blanket and wait what seemed like an eternity, and finally get to see them. It always seemed like it was too short a time for how long we waited. At some point, they stopped shooting off the fireworks in our town, probably realizing that it wasn’t safe enough where they were doing it. Those were some great times, too.

For the most part, I spent the week without shoes on. As soon as I got to the house, I pulled off the sneakers and socks and just let my feet breathe. It felt so good to go outside and feel the grass between my toes and be in direct contact with the ground. I had to put something on my feet to walk places, but that was it. It reminded me of being a kid and fighting with Mom because she wanted us to always have something on our feet and we didn’t want to. Running around in the yard, why would we need sneakers on? Playing wiffle ball in the yard, who needs sneakers? I knew I could run faster with bare feet. Just sitting around in the shade in our front yard and reading comic books certainly didn’t require something on our feet. Maybe Mom just hated having to clean our dirty feet after a fun day. Those were some really great times.

Vacation is over and it’s back to the real world, but I’ve been trying to go barefoot a little more than I was. I’m going to enjoy it as long as I can because in a few months we’ll have to be wearing socks and shoes, or sneakers, or (gasp) boots. By then my week in paradise will be but a distant memory, but I’ll have some happy feet. And some more great memories. 

A Penny Found

I went into the men’s room at work last week and as I went to do my thing, I noticed there was a penny in the urinal. It didn’t disturb me or gross me out, but it did make me stop and think. My thought process went something like this:

“Why would anybody drop a penny into the urinal?”

“Is this supposed to be funny? Because if it is, I don’t really see the humor.”

“Is this supposed to tick off the cleaning crew because they’ll have to get the penny out?”

“Is someone going to check every so often and see if the penny is still there?”

“Why would anybody drop a penny into the urinal?”

By then I was about finished what I had gone in for and probably thought a little too much about it. Here’s the sad part about all this: I’ve looked in that urinal every day since, just to see if it was still there. For those of you who can’t stand the suspense, the penny is still there, with poor Abe lying face down at the bottom. It bothered me that the penny was still there after more than a week, not because someone is wasting money (hey, it’s only a penny), not because no one is removing said penny from the place where us men relieve ourselves, but because I couldn’t figure out why it was there in the first place.

So I did what most people do today, I Googled 'penny in a urinal'. To my surprise, there is a game people play with pennies and urinals. It used to be that people left it on the urinal and would see how long it took for someone else to take it. Then people started putting the penny in the urinal. I can pretty much guarantee that the penny in the urinal doesn’t get taken anywhere near as much as the penny on the urinal. Go ahead, Google it yourself and see what you find.

The whole coin in the water got me thinking about the library in the town I grew up in. No, people didn’t leave pennies in the toilets or urinals at the library, but they did have an area with fish swimming around, not a fish tank, but a mini-pond in the middle of the library. People used to throw coins of all denominations in there and it was very tempting as a kid to reach in and grab some change. It still looks pretty much the same today:

My wife has confessed that as a kid, she occasionally reached in and grabbed some change. And as I mentioned in this post, back in those days a quarter was all you needed to get a soda and a candy bar at the gas station near my house.

I always liked to read, so I’d go to the library with my Mom to get a couple of books. While I was downstairs in the Children’s area choosing my books, Mom was upstairs looking for something for herself. When I was done, and I was always done first, I would go find her and she’d tell me to go sit at a table or in a chair and start reading one of my books. Only I’d go sit by the fish (and the coins) and strategize on how to get me some money. There were two problems, however, that held me back. First, the fish freaked me out. They were big and in my overactive imagination they’d bite into my arm and pull me under the water. Second, there were a lot of adults around and they all seemed to be watching me, like there was a conspiracy to make sure no kid got any of their money. Needless to say, I never even got one penny out of the fish pond.

Needless to say, I’m also not going to get a penny out of a urinal either. At some point it will get taken out by someone. Maybe that’s why some bathrooms include a sign saying “Employees must wash their hands before returning to work.”