Lessons of the week

As you get older, you learn certain things that escaped you along the way.  For instance, this is the two month period of time each year when I am married to an older woman.  It will only last until September when I catch up, but I have never let it pass without calling Mary Lou out on our age difference.  This week, I have said nothing until now.  You can teach an old dog new tricks.

I learned that there can be 100 percent humidity when the sun is coming up.  I try to walk five miles every day.  I have been getting up earlier and earlier to try to beat the heat.  Yesterday, I left the house at 5:30 a.m. and was drenched in sweat in less than a mile.  

I learned that the more sunscreen you put on your face, the more you sweat.  I wipe my face repeatedly with my shirt until there can certainly be no screen protection left.  I guess I should consider walking before the sun comes up.  The humidity will be the same, but at least I will avoid the rays of the sun.

In a very big lesson, I learned that whatever you put into a storage unit will likely remain there for ages no matter how good your intentions.  We have three air conditioned units here in Auburn, which have gone up in monthly rent faster than gold, the Dow Jones, and the Consumer Price Index combined.  

This week, Mary Lou and I decided to at least combine the three units into two.  Our shredder has been running so much that I expect the smoke detector to go off at any moment.  Ninety percent of the items we have brought back to the house have been discarded.  The sad truth is that most of it should have been discarded before we put it in storage.  

The lesson about storage units is simply that they are a scam, designed to hold things no one else wants and that you do not need but cannot bring yourself to discard.  In the meantime, I have paid more in storage rent since our move to Auburn than we paid for our first house on Town and Country Road in Donalsonville.

I learned that repeated days of a heat index above 100 degrees means that your geraniums are not going to come back.  I also learned that if you have thousands of acorns land in a rather lush lawn, they will all try to come up in your lawn with the right combination of rain, heat and humidity.  If I quit mowing, I could have a forest in a decade.

This week, I learned that just because you operate on or replace three joints, it doesn’t mean that the next joint is not waiting its turn.   I learned it is time for my right hip to be replaced, which will definitely put me in the running for a bionic man medallion.  The scars will now be visible on one shoulder, one knee and two hips.   Just two more major joints to go. 

We learned that while we enjoyed our travels this Spring and Summer, we have missed our family and friends.  Catching up after a hiatus is fun.

We learned that trying to set a world record for the number of toilet tissue rolls tossed at Toomer’s Corner should probably not be scheduled in the middle of the afternoon during a brutal heat wave.  Nevertheless, the event was fun, and I was amazed by the number of fans that showed up.  I was especially glad to see Bo Nix there showing the newcomers in the crowd how to properly roll an oak tree.  

Finally, I learned that while it is good to have a break in the Summer with fewer students, I still feel the energy with the new first-year class arriving on campus.  It was 53 years ago that I arrived in Auburn, ready to conquer the world with no idea how to do it.  

The world has changed greatly since then, but in many ways the lessons to be learned are just the same.   

o0o

Dan Ponder can be reached at [email protected]