Whatcha Doin?

   “What did you do today?” was a question my mom asked a lot when I was a kid.

   “Nothing,” was my most frequent reply.

   When I ask my kids the question, and they give me the “Nothing” answer, I follow it up with my reply which goes something like:

   “Nothing?  Really?  Do you know how hard it is to do nothing all day?  There are so many things to do, you probably spent a good deal of energy avoiding doing them just so you could do nothing.”

   I learned, or rather taught myself, that doing nothing is not all that easy.  Even if I slept all day, at least it was something - and would be quite an accomplishment because I’m a daylight person.  If it’s light outside, I’m probably active.

   Reflecting on what I've done all day, although my mom doesn't ask me any more, is really a good brain exercise.  I have a pretty good memory, and I like to keep it in shape.  It comes in handy sometimes - like earlier this week when a good buddy from grade school asked if anybody had some good memories of the summer our 6th grade baseball team went from years of a “Charlie Brown” team to finally making it to the city championship.
  
   I did have a memory to share - a vivid one - of a certain game that ended after four innings.  It was more than just a rain out, it was a baseball-sized hail, lightning-flashing, frog-strangler of a rain out   I can still remember being pelted by hail (fortunately, I got hit by the dime-sized hail and not the bigger stuff, although something of a decent size nearly knocked my ball cap down over my eyes).

   I have lots of memories that I like to share, some of which I include on this blog page.  Some of the stories have been repeated around the table when getting together with family.  I've included some of them in past, and I’ll probably write down more.  There are some family favorites (or maybe it’s my ability to tell the tale) that get repeated often - like the time I thought I was going to have to dig to China, and the various DIY projects with my dad and sister that managed to somehow go awry, injuries that could have been worse, etc.

   But one of the keys to recalling these memories is to occasionally sit back and reflect on what happened.  And to recall the feelings, the colors, the sounds, the smells, the tastes, and anything else of those events.

   So if you see me sometime and it looks like I’m doing nothing, there’s a good chance that my mind is whirling through events - of the day, or possibly of the past.  I’m always up to something - or so I've been told. 

   Can’t argue with that.

My Biggest Fan

   I recently bought a Lasko Wind Tunnel Fan.  I spent quite a bit of time in the fans aisle at the store, searching for just the right one.  For me, looks aren't really that important in a fan.  I'm interested in the white noise.  Sounds can trigger memories, and I was looking for just the right sound.
   When I was little, we had an old box fan.  I don't know how old it was, but it was encased in a wooden frame that was sturdy enough that an adult could sit on it.  The blades were metal and the front grill consisted of thin metal vertical strips of metal, some of which would vibrate and hum when the fan was blowing.  The fan and the motor combined to make a certain sound that I found very soothing.
   Of course, I was too big to take naps at the time, so on a hot summer day my mom would tell me just to stretch out in front of the fan and rest, perhaps with a book.  And so I did.  The fan sounded like an airplane to me.  And I would imagine that the airplane was a cargo plane, flying over a jungle in South America, bringing supplies to a small village in a valley between two mountains...
...
   And then I would close my eyes.  And I would see the jungle in my mind's eye.  Hanging onto cargo straps, I would lean out the open door on the side of the plane and feel the rush of the wind as we flew ever onward.  The heat of the jungle rose up to the plane, but the wind would keep it pleasantly warm and not too hot.  The cargo plane had pontoons so we could land on the small lake in the valley.  And we would land and unload the supplies to the villagers, who greeted us happily and asked out where we had been, the sights we had seen, and the adventures we'd had on our journeys...       
...
   An hour or so later, I woke up.  Once again, my mom had tricked me into taking a nap.  But I didn't mind.
   Flashing forward to now - I found a fan that, although it's not a wooden and metal sturdy-to-be-furniture fan of yesteryear, came close to the droning of the cargo plane from my childhood imagination.
   Last night I turned the fan on, and feeling the wind wash over me, I imagined once again being in a cargo plane, taking supplies to a far off village.  I was probably asleep in two minutes.