Willary Inc.: Birthdays, Recollections and Naps.

So it’s been what almost three months since I last posted a blog? Woops. So much for the every week goal back when I started this thing… but then again did anyone really think that would last long? It is sort of like when I tell Hillary “I’m totally going to start working out every day,” I know that is false. She knows that is false. In fact, it is to the point now that even Claire knows it is false. But don’t you worry this time will be different. I am recommitting – to exercising that is. The blog is pretty much a loss, I think once every three months is a reasonable expectation. Then I don’t have to feel guilty about not posting…and yes, I do feel guilty…well sometimes anyway…but it passes.

Yesterday was my birthday. Birthdays always make me think about the past and I tend to get a little nostalgic. I have a friend who frequently posts what he calls “hazy recollections” and I had a few of those yesterday. Here is one of them.

“A Hazy Recollection”

It is summertime, (or at least I remember it being summer and since this is my recollection I will decide on the “hazy” parts). This is after “the summer of whiffle ball” and also after “The summer of Nintendo 64 Goldeneye,” but before “the summer of halo.” Me, Travis, Tyler and Dan are at Tyler and Travis’s home and we are bored stiff. So we invent a game. It involves a green semi-squishy ball made out some sort of plastic compound about the size of a large cantaloupe that we found in TnT’s garage. We split into two teams and marked out the playing area. The area consisted of the driveway and roughly equal strips of grass on either side of the driveway. Each team occupied one of the areas of grass and the game consisted of trying to throw the ball across the driveway and getting it to hit the ground on the other team’s side. If you succeeded you got one point. I think games usually went to 7, maybe 11. Win by two. We invented all sorts of rules to go along with it. But most of those are pretty “hazy” now. Like I think if the other team caught the ball you threw then your team lost a point. But if the ball hit one of the people on the other team and then hit the ground you got two points. If the ball hit the driveway then it was free game for either team. If a thrown ball hit someone then went out of bounds one point was awarded.

There were probably more rules and I probably got some of the ones I mentioned wrong. But for at least, I would say two months, we were crazy about that game. We played it constantly. It was intense. There were amazing throws that bounced off the house or the basketball hoop. Ones that looped in the air or had weird spin applied to them that made the ball move in erratic ways, ones that used the wind (which was always blowing in IF) to throw off the other team. Wondrous saves were made by lunging leaps and spectacular dives. Balls were snatched out of the air mere inches, no centimeters, from the ground. Glory was ours for the taking and take we did, as only young boys of summer can.

So, now that I have gotten that out of the way. Here is a story about Claire, which is what you all read this thing for anyway.

So the other day Hillary and I are sitting in the front room. It is a lazy Sunday afternoon and I am dozing on the couch. Claire is in her room which shares a wall with the front room.

Hillary says to me “Hey you napping over there?”

I reply: “Sure am.”

To which Claire, who has suddenly appeared in the front room apparently solely for the purpose of adding to the conversation, forcefully interjects: “I don’t want to take a nap. I hate naps.”

Me: “I love naps.”

Hillary: “Me too.”

Claire: “I just hate them.”

Me: “Why do you hate naps?”

Claire: “obviously, just cause you have to sleep.” (she recently mastered the word obviously and likes to use it when every she can)

Me: “But, sleep is what makes naps so great.”

Claire: “Nope. I hate sleep. It makes me bored.”

Me: “So you hate naps because they are boring?”

Claire: “Obviously.”

Me: “Well no one said you had to take one…”

Claire: “Oh, well ok, but I just hate them.”

She then leaves and returns to her room just as suddenly as she appeared.