“What to do in Spokaloo”
By: Chip Roe
Happy New Year! I don’t know about you but I am so ready for a new one! Not that the old year wasn’t good, no not at all however I completely wore that one out. I keep a calendar/journal on my desk and scratch notes in there each day. The calendar now looks as though it was discovered on Howard Carter’s last archaeological expedition. Some of it’s strange symbols and markings just as hard to interpret. There’s the entry about blowing a tire while hurtling down bone breaker hill. And here’s an interesting note, discovered that going over the waterfall backwards helps you to see how the paddle you dropped managed to get stuck halfway up like that. Here’s one from last January, Went fly fishing on remote stretch of Spokane River. Lost shoe while crossing dry creek. Dry creek was a three feet torrent of ice berg laden water at the time. My calendar has coffee stains, lunch stains, and I believe is a portal to another dimension, it’s inked up from a dozen different pens, each predecessor falling victim to the same black hole. There’s really not enough room on it’s pages to hold all the living I did last year. Some of it’s pages tell tales of such comedy filled error that even I think someone must have made them up. There is one mostly blank page, with small tear drop shaped stains, (must have had a leaky cup that day) I thought I lost my little girl when she went off to college, I grieved but soon discovered that despite my example I had helped produce an intelligent, independent young woman instead. One thing glaringly noticeable is this, I can’t find a single entry that says nothing happened today. If nothing happened I didn’t bother to write it down. I know there were some days where the tires stayed on, I didn’t fall off, on, or into anything. Hooks only went into fish, and I didn’t run over my table saw with the backhoe nor discover while relaxing under a tree that yes, squirrels DO sometimes fall out and when they do they apparently think you had something to do with it. Fortunately rabies is rare in squirrels.
Where went the days that nothing happened? Gone and forgotten as if they never happened at all.
I have sitting right here in front of me a new box of pens and a crispy clean brand new calendar without a mark on it. I am excited and full of anticipation as to what is going to fill the pages this time. The world is bursting with opportunities for love, sharing, compassion, personal growth and adventures. whoever and wherever you are, what are you going to put in your calendar this year? I hope yours gets filled with life and that there are few entries that say, “nothing happened today”. See you next month with another edition of “What to do in Spokaloo”.