(I hope you enjoy this excerpt from ONE WRONG TURN AT A TIME, my humor book-in-progress that chronicles adventures I’ve shared with my other half as we’ve trekked all 50 states as a couple. This piece is in memory of Chris Alligood, a friend from our early days, who passed into the light this past year.)
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Rice and I lived outside Boulder, Colorado in the 1980s. Newlyweds, carefree and childless, we scraped together some funds for backpack camping gear. Fun times awaited, right?
Wrong. Our marriage barely survived our first solo overnight trip together. (Another story, another time.)
Suffice it to say, I hesitated when another couple invited us camping a few weeks later.
“C’mon,” Carla urged. “We’ll drive up past Ward and break camp near where we park. No lugging gear along the switchbacks. Just some day hikes into the canyons.”
I softened, happy to hear a plan that allowed for coolers of real food, not freeze-dried astronaut packets. The luxury of cold beer by the fire. An outhouse nearby with a small sink and light. And toilet paper.
As Rice steered the Citation up the road past Ward, the terrain grew rocky.
My breathing quickened. “Let’s turn back,” I said.
“We’ll be fine,” he assured me.
Fine schmine. We’d just spent a chunk of change on new tires, after buying our first house, a cute yellow ranch in a subdivision called Gunbarrel Estates. We weren’t dirt poor, but we weren’t flush. I hated to fret about money, but I did. Mature as I was, I climbed into the back seat, grabbed a beer from the cooler, and rode the rest of the way, sulking on the floor.
Rice was right, though. We made it to our destination just fine, met up with Chris and Carla, pitched our tents and had a relaxing evening.
The real fun began the next morning.
Rice didn’t smile as he greeted me on his return from his morning constitutional. “I hate to tell you this, honey, but your contact case fell down the hole in the john.”
This confused me. I’d tucked my contacts lens case into his Dopp kit.
“Why would you take your Dopp kit into the outhouse?” I tried to keep a steady tone.
“To brush my teeth.”
Ewww. I shivered, trying not to think about it.
He continued. “I went to set the kit on the ledge over the latrine. But apparently, you never zipped the kit closed.” He paused. “And somehow your case fell out of it.”
I inhaled sharply, no longer fixated on the gross factor. My mind’s eye saw dollar bills floating about me like dust in the wind. My gosh-darned hard contact lenses, the ones that made me feel like a nail was gouging my eyeball when a speck of dust got in them…. I purchased those babies once a year, a single pair costing several hundred dollars. They were gone?
Yes, because Rice just dropped them down the crapper. And I’d now have to wear my ugly Coke-bottle lensed glasses for the unforeseeable future.
“Don’t cry, honey.” Rice looked like he might want to cry, too. Or maybe what I saw in his eyes was fear. Fear that I might start to cuss or stomp my feet or call him names, right there in front of Carla and Chris.
For a moment, the crisp mountain air cocooned us in silence.
Then God bless Chris. He punched Rice’s arm in a good-buddy gesture.
“I’ll bet we can get that case back,” he wagered.
Carla and I watched—from a slight distance—as they rigged a fishing line, gobbed it with chewing gum on the end, and cast it down the hole, trying to get my case to stick to it. No dice. Oh, the fishing line worked, but the guys needed something else at the end to grasp the case.
Chris grabbed an empty soda can and cut it open, making a scoop.
And I kid you not. It worked! They retrieved my case and tucked it into a used sandwich bag for safe transport.
Trust me. I boiled the hell out of that case after we got back home. I threw out the pan I boiled it in, too. But darned if those lenses didn’t work just fine until next year’s budget allowed me to buy new ones.
To those who might judge me for wearing those contact lenses again, let me say this. My dignity had already left the building. If I had any left, I wouldn’t be sharing this story.
Then again, as Rice has been known to say on occasion when asked to review my work: “How could you not share such an awesome sh*t show?”
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Here’s 37 seconds’ worth of scoop for you…to respect your time while also honoring a promise to myself to share one blog post a month throughout 2024.
(Rumor has it, today's average blog reader likes their posts short and sweet, as in 37 seconds sweet. To which I say, I'm more of a 60-second gal. But I can only try.)
So...if our 37 seconds haven't run out, I’d like to carry on the tradition of sharing my Word of the Year each January, which is now.
Interestingly, that's my 2024 word as well: NOW.
Here are some things I hope NOW will remind me to do this year:
Savor the present. Except during visits for root canals or mammograms, in which case this bullet point is null and void.
Stop procrastinating.
Seize opportunities. Even—or maybe especially?—those that scare me.
Nurture my sense of gratitude. I can be pissed that I’m old and my bones creak, or grateful I woke up to see another day. Okay, granted, I can sometimes be both. Ultimately, though, the choice is mine.
Continue to grow. Not by focusing on the past or the future. Growth happens in the present. NOW.
Strengthen my connections. Love big. Be present for others. NOW.
And that’s all, y’all. For NOW. Unless you have another 37 seconds….
If that’s the case, I’d love you to go to the comments and tell me: What’s YOUR 2024 Word of the Year?
(And as always, please sign up for my newsletter if you haven’t already done so. NOW.)
One of my favorite things this December has been walking my granddaughter to the bus on mornings so crisp I can see her breath in the air. She skips and sings and hoots a reply to an owl in the distance. Before crossing the street, she shoots a grin at a twelve-foot skeleton left up from Halloween, looming in a neighbor’s yard across from the park. Now donned in a red skirt and Mrs. Claus cap, Skelley’s bony arms cradle a strand of bright lights, apropos for this season of the year.
Recently, Skelley’s homeowners, somewhat taken aback, used our neighborhood’s Facebook page to share the content of an unsigned letter they got in the mail. The letter referenced their lighting display, deeming it somewhat “evil and demonic.”
That post provoked its own sizzles and pops. Dozens—and dozens—of neighbors weighed in. One or two suggested the display was, well, “dumb,” but an overwhelming majority said they found Skelley fun. Inoffensive. No one else mentioned finding it “evil” or “demonic.”
Skelley reminds me we all see the seasons differently. And by that I mean life, because life passes in seasons, too. Trends come and go, whether we’re talking about cars and hair styles or outside Christmas lights and décor.
When I was a kid, December meant colored lights on the bushes as well as a light-up plastic Santa and sleigh and reindeer up on the rooftop just so. My stepdad did all the work, but he drew the line when my mom asked for stringed lights to line the roof’s edge. “That would be tacky,” he told her.
At some point, probably during my own young-mom season of life, I cringed at all the outdoor Santa displays. What about Jesus being the reason for the season? Then I befriended a woman who’d converted from Catholicism to Judaism. Personally, she found all the outside December lights and decor tasteless.
Ouch. But that’s what she felt in that season. Her season.
These days, I bask in my glorious grandparent season. I don’t let the tangles and knots of the holiday lights stress me out too much. Granted, I am still struggling to warm to all the new-fangled inflatables. I know, I know, a lot of folks love ‘em. Maybe it’s because I’m older—or as my granddaughter’s learned to phrase it, golden—but in my mind, inflatables are the mullet hairstyle of holiday lighting. With luck, they’re just a fad that will pass. Eventually. God willing. Maybe they’ll even stay good and gone. Unlike the mullet.
This season, though, what the heck? Bring on the inflatables…the abundance of lights…Skelley and Santa. The Nativity, too, please. (Although, I confess, I struggle with questions about that in this latest season of mine. Like, why do we celebrate Jesus’s birth in the winter instead of the spring? And how is it Mary and Joseph, despite their long journey, remain so clean? And Caucasian?)
But enough already. I count myself lucky to celebrate yet another season. I’m happy to string my white lights and fake greenery, even if down the street, Skelley stands prouder, her light strand more vibrant and fun. So be it. We don’t have to decorate cookie-cutter style in this ‘hood.
And that, my friend, is just one sweet thing I'm celebrating during this joyful season.
