Of course it is April Fools' Day. Why else would it be hailing just as SOS leaves for school? It was sunny and beautiful up until he put on his backpack.
For several years, in the valley where I lived in my former life, there were large billboards along the freeway with a man smiling a cheesy smile as he draped his arms around the giant telephone number 222-2222. Aparently, if you were in an accident, he was going to be your buddy and fix all of your problems. What more could you want than a friendly accident lawyer who knew how to drape his arms around giant numbers? Fortunately, I never had cause to call him. But now I am curious, because on the same billboards, with the same giant red numbers 222-2222, there is a cozy little smiling family. They are smiling because they called the number to buy a house. They may also be smiling because they get to drape their arms around each other, but I'm not sure. I've thought a great deal about why a family would buy a house from an accident lawyer, and about an equal length of time wondering why an accident lawyer would change his career to realty without changing his advertising strateg...
It's a cheap party trick: I pull out my phone, flip it open to check the time or send a quick text, and watch for the reactions. In the decades I've owned a flip phone, people have given me a few double takes. Recently, though, when I opened my phone to squint at a photo texted to me, the person sitting across the conference table surprised me with a "Haha! I love your phone!" And I did, too. I loved my flip phone. Then, in a deadly mistake of distracted domesticity, I scooped it up with my bed sheets and dropped it in the washing machine: Eco Cold, extra spin. Oh gentle readers, the tragedy of beautiful T9 predictive text programming drowned at the bottom of the linens spin cycle! Yes, I lost saved phone numbers, the blurry store photos I'd snapped over the years to double check prices when back to internet access, the text threads with details about addresses and meet-ups... all lost. Sad, inconvenient, annoying, frustrating, all of it. But the biggest tragedy, ...
I think my blog is on the verge of an identity crisis. The most consistent reason new readers visit here is for the song lyrics I posted to annoying children's songs more than two years ago. And how can I, in good consciousness, continue to post on a blog titled "Life in the Slow Lane" when I've said I would do what promotes the very antithesis? (work overtime) But if I stop posting about the things of the Slow Lane, who will carry on? Who will confess to a board member stopping to comment on how she owns nail color the exact shade as I am wearing on my toes, but she only bought it because she knew she would never wear it so it could be seen? Who will instruct on the proper way to wash a car (leave it in the rain) or what to say when an eleven year old calls you to share what he is eating for dinner? Indeed, I would be tempted to stop posting altogether if it weren't for the fact that this blog is contributing to the sanity of at least one person in this great ...
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