After the Fact: Bottoms up

“This boat that we just built is just fine – And don’t try to tell us it’s not. The sides and the back are divine - It’s the bottom I guess we forgot.” It’s one of my favorite poems from Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” I used to read this book with my kids and we shared a lot of laughs.

A lot of my plans are like that poem, and, as expected, sink midway through the cruise, for one reason or another. Sometimes, I’ve predicated plans on someone else’s actions which, when the time comes, don’t come about. “Oh, we’ll be bringing the kids for a visit right after school is out in June.” When July looms and the “kids” are still not here, we let Patience finish off the popsicles in the freezer and the dog gets an extra hot dog with his afternoon snack. Sure enough, the hot dogs will be gone and the boys will arrive, appetites at the ready. If you’ve not lived through a plague of locusts, having a couple of grandsons move in for a week will approximate the same amount of destruction.

We all tend to live life ahead of where we are, which is good. If you didn’t, every other step could put you knee-deep in a hole. But to make plans for things too far in the future is just as perilous. There may be detours along the way that weren’t programmed into your GSI. I’m of the semi-old school: I don’t have a GSI, but rely on maps I’ve printed from my computer. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a “road map” since the last I bought at a gas station that only nominally housed a convenience store. It’s become easier to just use a credit card at the pump, eliminating the need to get more than a few steps from the car. Remembering those old maps: did you ever try to fold one back in exactly the way it was before you opened it?

If we didn’t change behaviors as opportunities arise, think of all the little girls who would have grown up to be teachers or nurses and every little boy who wanted to be a fireman. We sure wouldn’t have the “shortages” we experience in those professions, but, on the other hand, there would be too few job openings for all of the applicants!  Making changes in life is really not much more complicated than putting a bottom on your boat when you’ve already launched.

I cannot remember a time when my sister Micki wanted to follow any career but nursing, and that’s exactly what she did for almost 50 years. In those same 50 years, I tried at least half-a-dozen different jobs, liked most, loved some, was not sorry to leave others.  The era when a young person would graduate from college, take a job and leave that same employer after 50 years has passed. The norm for a millennial, I’ve been told, is two years at one job! It wasn’t until I’d been teaching at least five years that I thought I had a slim hold on what it was I should be doing!

Even moving, for whatever reason, from one town to another or one house to another is putting the bottom back on the boat mid-float. One such memorable occasion came when the ex- decided we would be happier in larger accommodations, three doors down and across the street. And, in that move, everything from two drawers in my bedroom chest disappeared. Every piece of lingerie I owned, save that which I had on my body the day the furniture rode out of sight, was gone forever. Talk about bottomless boats!