The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Usually it’s sad to call it quits on a vacation, but … not this trip. If we can make it home without being killed or caught, I will gladly call this a successful trip. Currently we’re parked in the Observation Deck of the Albuquirky Airport a mere 3 hours before our flight, that’s how snakebit we felt after missing our plane on the way down. ‘Better early than never’, isn’t that the expression.

Naturally the temperature here today will finally break past the 40’s and hit 60. We’ll get home to freezing rain. That pretty much sums up the trip, at least from a meteorological standpoint, maybe not the fairest metric. After all, we had plenty of sun to balance out the snow, the wind, the freezing temperatures. It is, after all, winter in the Sunbelt too. Or as my man Trump would crow, ‘Where’s your global warming now, Mr. Daddle?’

And so it’s back to politics as usual in a country run by an imbecile surrounded by sycophants admiring his invisible raiment. For over a week down here that was all left behind, no little relief for us moron-weary travelers, a nice respite from talking heads and apparently the start of a very long 2020 election with so many hats thrown into the ring, it makes my modest collection look paltry. And who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind and throw one of mine in too. It’s like a Demolition Derby, whatever jalopy is still moving after countless bashes and wrecks will be declared the ‘winner’ before being hauled off to some wretched salvage yard, its radiator still steaming and engine oil dripping on a red hot muffler.

D.C. seems a world away from New Mexico, at least in the Outback if not Santa Fe and Albuquerque. We have to go home now and check for frozen pipes. Politics has to take a backseat when the living is hard. And for a lot of New Mexico, the living is hard indeed. Hasta la vista.

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So all us little hooligans would roll back into school come September and invariably our new teacher would give us our first homework assignment to write what we’d done during our summer break. Three months of unstructured play and now we 4th graders or 6th graders or whatever grade were supposed to compose an essay to describe idyllic idleness.

It didn’t exactly ruin it for us, that’s not how it felt, it just didn’t work, like jamming a square peg into a round hole. Maybe Miss Crenshaw went to Italy with her paramour and toured Rome and the ruins, adult organized vacation time, we didn’t know and we couldn’t make her write that essay, that’s for sure, but how were we supposed to scribble out on #2 pencils an interesting couple of wide spaced pages all those sandlot whiffle ball games and the bike riding or those long treks in all directions past the creeks and ponds or through the woods beyond the new houses or that time we went so far nothing was familiar and it took hours to find our way back home? We spent whole afternoons playing marbles, fer chrissake! We’d kill an entire day trading baseball cards or swapping old musty comic books, what are you going to say to Miss C. about that?

Sure, there was the time Joey Vandiver fell off his bike and broke his arm — he had a story. About two sentences before the rest of his vacation he hauled his arm around in a cast he carried in a dirty filthy sling. What I Did On My Summer Vacation: Not Much!!

We all signed our names on Joey’s cast. Did we all write that down on our essay? Were we going to be graded on all that NOTHING we did when we should’ve gone to Yellowstone National Park or 6 Flags over Atlanta? I shouldn’t have to tell you, I hated going back to school. And that first assignment should tell you all you need to know about WHY I hated to go back to school. Vacations are exactly like freedom. You don’t have to do a damn thing. And you don’t feel guilty either.

Until you go back. Today we’re going back and this is my essay…..

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