Saturday 6/15/24
Was sitting here thinking about a possible cover for There Is No Doubt: Story Girls, when someone calls me and starts telling me about their trip to the lake today with their ten-year-old daughter to go kayaking.
He puts his kayak in the water, then goes to get in. I'm not exactly sure what the set-up was here. But the people on duty--described as comely college women (okay, he said "hot college girls," but I'm translating)--started reprimanding him because he was doing something wrong and you're supposed to get in on land or put your kid in on land, or something. Again, I don't know. We had a bad connection.
So he says words to the college women on staff to the effect of "When I was your age this is we taught people to do it," then he gets in the kayak with his preferred, against-the-rules throwback method, flips the thing one way, goes underwater, skins his knee, starts bleeding, recovers and somehow surfaces, flips it the other way and like nearly drowns.
Everyone looking on. All of the comely college women home for the summer.
I'm listening to this and finally I say, "This is fucking depressing. You're like an old man." He says, "It wasn't an age thing." I said, "You're even doing the 'when I was your age' thing. This is horrible."
He's laughing and I say, yeah, you can laugh, you've peaked, you got what you came for, this is it.
When I was your age. I'm not saying that's the death knell, but it's like the entrance music for death that you switched on yourself.
When you don't feel like running stairs, you think about things like this, and you find that you run the stairs.
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