Fall is in the air....

Well here in Dogpatch as my dad so lovingly calls it, we've had a cool spell.  It's been around 80 degrees and it has been glorious!!! Glorious I tell ya!  We've had a long weekend what with Labor Day and all.

     So let me tell you about a phone call we received.  Scout received a call on his phone which in and of itself is a novelty because I don't know if you know this but teenagers don't answer phone calls... they answer texts.  It's much more impersonal and cold but that's just how it is.... Clearly my father doesn't understand that but that's a whole 'nother post in and of itself... anyhoo... Scout answers the call and low and behold it's his PawPaw... he called to reminsce about a pivitol time in Scout's life. It was the threshhold between child and young man, and without a doubt, Scout failed miserably.

     When Scout was a Kindergartener, he went to the Grand Canyon with PawPaw and ChaCha.  It was quite the ordeal... but suffice it to say I should have probably thought twice about sending one of the sweetest little boys off with his grandparents but I had another sweet little baby at the house, was working full time and going to school - I thought Scout might enjoy a little break from me... so after days of riding locomotives, rock climbing, and traversing the Grand Canyon, PawPaw and the gang are at the hotel... a hotel which has a pool... which Scout was dying... DYING to get in... PawPaw says Scout can you swim? and here is where it gets tricky... knowing that he can't but wanting so badly to be able to,  Scout says with all the bravado a Kindergardener can muster and says... why of course PawPaw... there was the line - He wanted to be big, wanted PawPaw to be oh so proud of him, wanted to go swimming but here was the problem... he COULDN'T no more swim than the man in the moon!!!  PawPaw gets the towels, and trapses  Scout downstairs to make all of his little wishes come true... Scout runs and jumps in and promptly sinks straight to the bottom of the pool and before anyone else could react - Selden promptly jumps in after Scout with his wallet, boots, jeans, knife and belt on... Long story short - Scout calls me and says (hiding under the blanket on a cell phone trying to whisper... PAWPAW NEARLY DROWNDED ME!!!!!) and immediately starts crying and the jig was up.... well this weekend ChaCha washed PawPaw's jeans which had his wallet in it and as he was laying his money out to dry, the act of airing out all his business reminded him of a time not so long ago... when a little boy tried to be big, as big as his PawPaw and failed miserably....

      Isn't that the sweetest thing but wait it gets better.... PawPaw also called to tell me that he got my high school annual for me... that's right - I'm nearly 40 years old and I never got my senior high school annual - and quite honestly I only got one annual - they were kind of pricey... so I never got them... for the record - I never got my senior pictures taken either... well so I had asked my dad to get the annual when I figured out that I wouldn't be going to my 20th high school reunion and he hadn't mentioned it... so I figured he just forgot about it - it wasn't that big of a deal besides - most of the people I went to school with probably don't remember me and that's cool but deep down inside - I wanted that annual... I longed for it... but it would be silly to tell people that... so after Scout got off the phone, he and I sat side by side and teared up a little bit.... because he knew what the annual ment to me and I knew what the memory meant to him....