“Holy crap!,” I found myself surmizing, “How is it that I’m able to think at all?”

Earlier, I took my mind for a walk. Both it and the rest of me needed the exercise and fresh air. And while, my body obeyed every command given it, my mind chose to wander off and it got lost.

Yes, I lost my friggin’ mind!

Then after hours of looking under every rock and behind every bush, I remembered where I left it. Having washed it, I failed to put it back in my brain-vault.

But at least I had my house key.

While fueling my truck at Costco, I heard the gas pump, in a male voice, ask, “Hello, how are you?”

Startled, I answered “I’m doing good.”

Costco recently replaced all the pumps, so I figured it to be something new that came with the reconstruction. That’s when the pump inquired, “What are you up to?”

I responded, “Uhh…getting gas.”

Sounding slightly irritated the voice stated, “I need to call you back,” adding, “There’s a guy on the other side of this pump who keeps answering me.”

Simultaneously peeking around the pump at one another, we both had a really good laugh.

“Boredom has got me by the nuts,” I complain to the dogs.

They’re not very good listeners, at least not when it comes to my bitching and moaning. However, grab a bag of potato chips or clink a spoon against a dish and see the four-legged beggars come running.

That’s how a dog’s life works: food and affection and crapping in the yard. Some days, like today, I wish I had it so good, as I watch all four napping at my feet.

Then again, maybe I’m the one that has it good and I’m simply not seeing it. Maybe.

Perhaps I heard her alarm beeping. I know I hear the shower as she turns it on.

Auto-reflex – I pull my covers over my head, pretending the light from her room isn’t real. Unfortunately, it is.

I know I must get out of bed.

It’s the same activity of the morning, from day-to-day, whether I’ve slept well or not. I tell myself that I can always return to bed after she goes to work.

I never do.

Coffee time instead. I sit at my computer, hoping for ‘good news’ from the media and ‘spying’ on my friend’s world through Facebook.

All the leaves are gone.
Standing, frozen, awaiting
Heavy snow to adorn
Their naked limbs,
A delicate beauty.

Before we were old enough to go out and help around the farm, like our cousins, my brother and I would end up staying with Grandma. There was very little to do, so we quickly grew bored and that’s how we got in to trouble.

Grandma raised chickens in a large coop out back of the house. Each morning Adam and I would collect eggs for Grandma.

Mostly due to boredom and partly because of imagination, we created little games to play. One such game was ‘Fishing for Chickens.’

Now, I was old enough to know we didn’t want to do anything to harm Grandma’s chickens, so we didn’t use hooks. Instead, we threaded chicken feed directly onto the fishing-line.

Once threaded and using whatever sort of stick we could find as a pole, we’d toss the ‘bait’ out to the chickens as they wandered about the backyard. The goal was to get one to ‘take the bait’ and we’d ‘reel’ it in.

Amazingly, once a chicken took the feed, they refused to let it go. At the time, I thought chickens chewed their food, so I didn’t know they swallowed it whole.

We spent much of the early morning ‘reeling’ in chickens and then forcing them to let go of the ‘bait.’  Looking back, while we we’re having fun, I don’t think the chickens were all that happy – but unfortunately for them, they weren’t smart enough to refuse the ‘bait.’

Then shortly before noon, Adam and I set our minds on the big prize: Grandma’s rooster. Time after time, we tried to get the bird to take the ‘bait,’ but he simply ignored it.

Then Adam dropped the ‘bait’ right in front of the rooster and he snapped it up. He had to fight the rooster as he pulled the bird closer and closer to the porch from which we were ‘fishing.’

Once the bird was within arms reach, Adam seized it by the neck and I grabbed its wings. That’s when all hell broke loose.

The bird, in full-panic, used it’s talons to break free and in doing so, sliced both of us up. Finally, after a few pain-filled kicks, we both let it go.

Hearing the commotion, Grandma came outside to see what was going on. She found us, bleeding and the rooster racing in circles, dragging Adam’s ‘fishing pole’ behind it.

She ordered us into the house, where she cleaned our scratches and threatened to whip our backsides. Instead, she made us stand in the corner for a long-while as she went outside and rescued her rooster.

It proved unpopular, and so ‘Fishing for Chickens’ was one game we never again played.

Tambor Adams was a natural-born complainer. His chief complaint being that he always wished he were someplace else than where he was now.

Time and again, family, friends and co-workers heard him say, “I wish I wasn’t here.”

It didn’t matter if he were in a fancy restaurant, his corner office at work, church, his daughter’s baseball game or his favorite recliner, Tambor would complain. One afternoon as he sat on a park bench eating his brown-bag lunch, Tambor sighed, “I wish I wasn’t here.”

A homeless woman sitting at the other end of the bench, feeding the pigeons, overheard him and replied, “You keep wishing that and you’ll make it come true.”

Tambor looked at her with disdain, thinking, “What does she know about anything, anyway?”

Finishing his lunch, started back to the office, the echo of the woman’s words bouncing around his head. He nodded at his secretary as he entered his office and she politely smiled back in acknowledgment.

Seated in his leather office chair, Tambor picked up a pile of papers and stated aloud, “I wish I wasn’t here.”

It was early evening when everyone but Tambor’s secretary had left for the day, that she decided to tell him she was leaving for the night. Much too her surprise though, he wasn’t in his office.

“I don’t know,” she answered the detective as he asked about how he could have left without her seeing him.

The corner office, filled with two detectives, an uniformed police officer, the office manager and the secretary, grew immediately quiet when there came from the leather chair behind the desk, a faint voice asking, “Hello – anybody there?”

Tambor Adams had finally wished himself away.

Boredom got the better of me and I decided to visit a book store to have a look around. I didn’t buy anything as my wife says ‘One more book and I’m gonna do more with it than throw it at you.’

I believe her.

“Not a bad-looking woman,” I thought as I passed a 40-something female in a nice black dress.  About that same time, she replaced the book she’d been looking at and rushed by.

A couple of strides later, she sneezed violently.  The woman, in mid-step, tripped and fell face-first to the floor.

I hurried over to offer my help.

My first act was to pull down her dress, which had slipped up, exposing her naked derriere. That’s when I realized she had tripped over her panties.

After getting her seated in a nearby chair, she slipped the panties from around her ankles and over her heels, asking, “Have you’ve ever sneezed your underwear off?”

“No,” I chuckled, “When I wear a kilt – I go commando.”

“Commando, good advice,” she smiled.

Jokingly, she held out the skimpy pink lace, “Don’t suppose you wanna a souvenir?”

“No thanks, my wife wouldn’t understand,” I laughed.

She grinned, “My husband wouldn’t either.”

Finally, having gathered her composure, she stuffed her errant panties into her purse, thanked me and headed for the doors, disappearing into the parking lot.

Love the long dusty road,
Crunch of gravel
Beneath boot and hoof.
Come on friend, travel
Down that dusty road,
Where life awaits.

Thirty-year old tractor,
Fence posts, barbed wire,
Barking ranch dogs,
Kids doing chores.
Heifer, hawk, coyote
Down that long dusty road.

Barnes half-fallen,
Sun-weathered boards,
Bailing wire, nails.
Down that dusty road
Ancient trucks, old men,
Faint echo of the past.

Wash hanging on the line,
Breezes emotions stir.
Wife, mother, the soul.
Steady strums her broom,
Supper cooks on the stove,
Her lips thin, smile warm.

Dust drifts, trails behind,
Smoke from an altar,
Lifts high to God.
Travel the dusty road
Where spirit, soul meet
In gravel and dust.

More like a river
Than that of a man.
Fast flowing water.
No apologies
For being untamed.