Old Fartdom

I’ve been re-reading some of my posts from the last week or so and it strikes me that I’ve been sounding like a cranky old fart. Sorry about that. Unfortunately, I now identify more with Walt, the dad in the cartoon “Zits” than with his son Jeremy. Or I identify more with Earl Pickles.

But, I just feel like I’ve got to get stuff off my chest when I encounter some of the ludicrous things that are floating around out there.

But, I did want to bring up something a bit more positive. My daughter was all excited yesterday on Facebook because she just became an aunt again (another niece). She’s just tickled to death for her brother and his wife. And that led me to think about some of the singular joys of having a daughter.

Living in the Midwest we’d have a number of thunderstorms each year (that’s a foreign concept here in Southern California). From the time Susan was about 4, everytime it would rain we’d have to go out and re-create one of her favorite scenes from a musical we had watched on TV together.

As it would start raining—the harder the better it would seem—we would have to get jackets and umbrellas and go out into the yard or even better walk along the gutter singing:
I’m singing in the rain,
Just singing in the rain,
What a glorious feeling,
I’m smiling again…
I walk down the lane
With a happy refrain,
Just singin’
Just singin’ in the rain…

We’d sing and dance and stomp in puddles splashing all over and then giggle and laugh until we were all wet and ready to scoot back inside to dry off.

Ah, that was a while ago. You can’t go back and do that again. But it sure does make for a great “re-run” in my mind and imagination of happy times with children. Maybe I’ll be able to do it someday when I finally get to Lincoln and meet my granddaughter. So, enjoy being an auntie again Susan. And Mike, enjoy Raegan being a toddler that you have to hustle to keep with.

So, hopefully that makes up for me being a cantankerous old fart recently.