Don't Take Me Seriously - Book - Page 171
Featured commentary
Are you suffering Labor (Day) pains?
A
t this time last year, I took
on the whole “labor” aspect
of Labor Day — as in the
fallacy that anyone really needs to
work for a living.
As proof of my point I have,
mentally anyway, pretty much taken
the past year off from all labor, and I
have survived. (But keep that on the
down-low because, somehow, I still
get a tiny paycheck.)
And while I would love to rub more
salt into the eyes of that beast called
“working for a living,” this year ,I
will instead take up another weighty
issue associated with the Labor Day
weekend: the mental anguish it brings
by serving as the cleaver-chop that
hacks off the tail of summer.
I am serious, my friends.
Everything beautiful about
summer is winding down or dead
already, and the Labor Day weekend
kicks the ashes of it into the wind.
and Southern California’s
Jim season
ridiculous imitation of fall, the
reminds you you’re almost to
WALKER former
Christmas and the latter really won’t
DON’T TAKE ME SERIOUSLY
Outdoor concerts are kaput. The
beach is going to sleep and your pool
parties are passed.
The days are getting shorter at
both ends, which begins to curtail
your outdoor activities, exercise
programs and, pretty much, all
positive motivations. Yet again, you’ve
missed your opportunity to take a real
summer vacation and all you are left
with is the heat. The kids are back in
school — which, don’t let anyone kid
you, the kids are not happy about. And
neither are all the parents who have to
do their homework for them. It only
adds to the getting-home-after-dark
work day.
And while I dearly love football
happen until then.
Basically, we’ve got heat, brush
fire season and 60 hour weeks to
look forward to, with the Halloween
decorations already grinning at us
from store shelves.
Now, if you are thinking that I
need a sabbatical, you are correct,
sir. But that’s only the fire under
the boiler. Herein I rail against the
injustice that grinds us all down —
this thing called the passage of time.
You see, the Labor Day weekend
is not only the candle-snuff of this
summer, it is a metaphor for the
passing of our glory days, be they
real or imagined. And it’s not so
much the coming of fall on the
calendar one more time that is getting
us down, it’s the relentless approach
of the autumns of our lives, as Labor
Day delights in pointing out.
The holiday offers its own
cruel twist on the well-known
TV catchphrase, hissing at us,
“Like summer sands through the
hourglass, so are the days of your
lives.” And then it “bwahahahas”
like a ghost mocking us from the
echoing, empty halls of the haunted
mansions of our unrealized dreams.
Did I mention I need a few months
off?
What do we do, mes amis? Will
we stand for this arbitrary end to the
summer good times? I mean, if you
take it in the seasonal sense, the days
have been getting shorter since June
21 and the fall equinox isn’t until
Sept. 23.
Who says Labor Day has to kick
beach sand in our faces? Shouldn’t
we take at least those 18 more days
of summer and clutch them to our
breasts greedily? And, even then,
who says we have to go back to
school, to labor or to any other of the
degradations that the winding down
of the year piles on us?
No, I say. Let us stand up and
wear white after Labor Day (as well
as those fawn-colored Topsiders we
got on sale in May).
Let us not go gentle, people —
toward the end of the year or toward
the “fall” of our lives. As Tom Petty
sang, “Well, I don’t know but I’ve
been told, you never slow down, you
never grow old.” So let us not slow
down. Let us merely add football
into the mix and press on with a
frenzied pace of summer fun.
That’s where I’m running, anyway.
Well, at least until it gets too dark
and cold. I wouldn’t want to pull a
hammie.
Comment at jwalker@the-signal.
com or Twitter @DontSeriously.
