Barbara J. Hamby

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Born Too Soon

At my age, my 2000 Honda is probably the last new car I’ll ever own. It may be the last car I drive. Now, too late, Honda has state-of-the-art Global Positioning that even includes notification of weather disasters, etc. As far as I know, nearly all new cars have some sort of global positioning system.

All my life I’ve suffered from severe directional challenge problems that could be better described as a mis-directional aptitude. Trust me, if I tell you to turn left at the corner to get where you’re going, you’d better turn right.

I’ve learned to work around this disability. Yesterday I met an old friend for lunch at a little restaurant in a mini-mall that sits back from the street and is partially hidden from view when driving by. I made a dry run the day before to locate it so I wouldn’t arrive late and stressed out. Thus I arrived exactly on time and we had a delightful visit.

In late afternoon yesterday, I swam in an outdoor pool here in King City for the first time. My timing was not the best; it was half full of kids who apparently mistook me for the Pied Piper because every time I moved from one end of the pool to the other, they followed. But they were courteous, not too noisy, and well supervised by many adults, so I stuck it out and decided to try a different time of day next time.

Today promises to be the hottest day we’ve had yet this year, so I opened up all the windows around 7:00 a.m. and sat on the deck reading the newspaper. I got a “Look at you, you lazy slouch” stare from a passing jogger. I chose to ignore her. By 10:00 a.m. it was too hot to sit on the deck and I brought my book inside and closed everything up.

When I pull shades and drapes and it gets dark inside, it reminds me of my childhood in the San Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys where it really got hot. Most of the summer our house was dark inside, but we kids didn’t spend much time indoors anyway. Heat wasn’t a problem for our skinny bodies. We ran around playing Kick the Can, Hide and Seek or other active games.

There was no television and radio didn’t lure us inside until the evening mystery stories such as The Whistler came on. We would sit on the floor in front of the radio in the dark and scream when a door squeaked or a predator lurked. Old memories are great.

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