Three of them, standing on the overpass as i was heading home with a head full of “i’ve still gotta” items for my day. Boys at that magic age where they’re old enough to have freedom for adventure, but young enough that it’s still cool to just play.
i scooted to the right lane to exit the highway, and watched them signalling the trucks – that universal kid gesture that says “Hey, Mister! Honk your big loud air horn when you go under the bridge!” Before i rounded the corner, i heard a trucker comply with their semaphore request.
Flashing back to my own days on the bridge, i could almost feel their giddiness! Growing up, we had an interstate bridge on our street – maybe a half mile down the road from our house. Before the days when large, chain-link fences are erected to keep people from dropping projectiles onto the cars below, we spent many hours on that bridge. Watching for trucks. Running from side to side to catch them as they approached.
This is, by the way, the definition of the phrase “Small town, not much to do”.
We’d get lost in it, though. The kind of thing you do when you’re a bored kid. The kind of thing that everyone did. In the grand scheme of things? Pretty damn meaningless.
But i miss that feeling.
With the weight of a couple more dead people* dropping on me this week, along with a few more bits of annoyance and vexation for good measure, i was dragging ass on the way home. People have noticed that i’ve acquired the habit of a very deep sigh. Sometimes it comes with nearly every exhale.
When did i forget how to leave it behind? When did i lose my ability to find mindless amusement in the most simple things? When did i get so fucking old?
i’m off on another business trip in the morning. Some time being stoopid with the Dawg Boyz with friends. May be just exactly what this ol’ bag of sighs needs… Shame i’m not driving.
adorable traveler found here
* Not literally. Mom’s sister died on Tuesday at the age of 84. My boss lost her father within about an hour. While i’m not close to either of the deceased, their deaths triggered a multitude of things for me to take care of – namely, finding a way for Mom to get to that fucking funeral today, while clearing the massive piles of work-stink that i needed to cover for the boss so she could attend to planting her father.
Trailer Park Refugee 
Sometimes I’m too lazy to sigh, so I just say “sigh.”
i type it as well as speak it as well as do it. all the fucking time. i’m even annoying myself with this… (sigh)
You mean dancing the Mexican Two-Step in the middle of a deserted city street at 1am, stone cold sober but drunk on being alive and 16. I could go further back but then I was a kid on a farm and 20 miles from anywhere. THAT is boredom! No wonder I got lost in books.
exactly! the art of being stoopid for the sake of being stoopid. i’ve momentarily misplaced that ability and i need to get it back. STAT!
Oh, I remember the HONK! I did it once in a while, but my own kids did it ALL THE TIME while I drove down the freeways. Now we all have the new little ones doing it. It’s as American as baseball, I’m tellin’ ya.
they’re almost born knowing how to do it. passed from generation to generation, even to kids who have never been inside the cab of a truck, nor seen an air horn, we just know how it goes… next time i’m on my bike and pass a truck, i’m gonna have to do this. just because.
Very nostalgic, love it! I gave you one of my weekly awards which you can collect if you like at my place.
Happy blogging!
Thank you, Elise! Very sweet of you to send people over here to the Trailer Park! Much appreciated!
I remember my boys doing the Honk thing when they were little. They would be so excited when a trucker obliged them!
Hi Eva! Thanks for stopping by The Trailer Park! It’s a pretty addictive game. i wonder why we stop playing it when we get older!
This post suddenly reminded me that I used to hitchhike up and down I-71 for kicks. I got stuck in Lima for about eight hours once. A girl finally picked me up and about :20 minutes into the ride she took her wig off. Shocking!
Lo-lo-lo-la-lo-laaaaa! And i remember a particularly harrowing hitchhiking adventure of my own…. dum-dum-de-dum-dum-dum for two 18 year old girls to hit the road, but we did…
Just look out the window and every time you see a big truck, yell out HONK! Perhaps after a few shots!
i may have to start doing this again! or just stick a sign on my back window that says “Honk if you like to entertain old ladies!”
We are all weans standing atop a bridge inside our heads. Sometimes we have to release them to wave at trucks and the shittier things in life.
Well, there you are! i promise to spend a little more time waving at shitty things… a grand plan indeed!
“When did I lose my ability to find mindless amusement in the most simple things?” I can help with mindless and simple if sighs does matter after all …….
“sighs matter”… oh, dear. that one hurts… thanks.
ouch
Ah, life. It never ends. Until it does.
and then there are sandwiches in the community room at the church, and if you’re lucky, those nice church ladies will make some jello fruit salad. i love that stuff. best part about funerals…
I love your tag for this post: “Enough with the fucking dead people already.” I think that would have been a much better title for “The Sixth Sense” starring Haley Joel Osment.
Winter has been brutal. i guess it’s a form of ‘culling the herd’, but sheesh…. enough already!
With circumstances being completely different, I find myself wondering the same things lately.
sunshine helps. one day in the south, with warmth and sun on my body and i’m feeling better already….
Grew up in a number of courts in a number of small towns and the “blow your horn mister!” was HUGE with us as well!
Pearl
p.s. The reminders of our own mortality are harsh. Lost an uncle and a friend in the last two months. 😦
It makes me want to drive a truck! i’d probably tire of it, but blowing my horn for kids – while forcing surprised drivers into ditches – could have been my calling. and yes. staring at the drain as i circle it… part of the funk.
Ahhh, blow your horns…. I remember that game. We used to have a couple of Gerber baby dolls that we would hold up in the back window and when a trucker honked at us we would squeak them back at the truck. After a full day of this when we were travelling somewhere that I can’t remember (I was very small), somehow those “squeaker thingies” in the dolls stopped functioning during the night while we slept. I think both my older sister and I may have been close to death that day. . .
We sigh because there is so much bottled up inside of us, that exhalation is the “safety valve” on our internal pressure cooker. The tension builds up in us because sometime in the past we have learned that we are not supposed to exhibit strong emotions — negative or positive. So they stay within, simmering.
i think i’d have taken the squeakers out of those dolls, too! like your take on ‘sighs’. it really does matter. 24 hours out of town, mostly on my own, and i’m already better…
I’m the master of mindless amusement in the simplest of things, i know no one believes me when i say this but i am, it’s still there Daisy you just gotta harness that shit.
i believe it. i used to be, too. until fairly recently – like, months ago – i was a master of getting lost in the silly. i believe this is temporary. and am counting on my Dawg Boyz to help me find it this week…
honking big lorries….ah the simple pleasant memories.,…wonder if there is an ipad version yet….heh
“honking big lorries”. sounds so dirty when you put it that way… you irish boys. always breaking hearts…
All you honkers look alike to me.
Blow me…