it's been that kind of summer
Torpid is the only word for it. A summer of little consequence and less accomplishment. As the days of June rolled unfruitfully by I blamed it on my wife's being gone, but then she returned in July, and the kids disappeared for a spell into day camp; and still motionlessness prevailed. The sump pump did not get installed in the basement. The little chinks in my traveling chariot -- a leak in the brake line, another in the freon hose, spark plugs unchanged well after the 100K mile mark -- sat unheeded. Compact discs, collection agency threats, and speeding tickets sat in a jumble on the kitchen table amid items requiring no immediate action, ever: ipod cords, chopsticks, single socks. Nary a song was written, nor fat Russian classic cracked.
Torpor in excelsis!
Where did it all go? Weekends I worked, usually out of town. (Characteristically, these jaunts left me tour-poor.) Mondays I did my thing at the Hideout. Daily I wore that particular chauffeur's hat known to all parents of children between the ages of 6 and 16, delivering them faithfully to friends' houses and music lessons and tennis and bar mitzvahs and movies bursting with graphic sex jokes for socially retarded twentysomethings. I also took them on a couple brief vacation-y trips, tried to keep up with the guitar for an hour or two a day, worked a little on learning to frail the banjo, ran three miles most mornings, read some easy books...and that's it. A pretty meager showing for a non-trivial fraction of my roughly three-score-and-ten allotment (1/280th).
I have just discovered a folder in my itunes library marked "July's Daily Song Sketches." It contains a 30-second file of me humming, recorded July 1.
School started today, an unmistakeable sign that it is time to grease up the cortical axles and make some magic happen around here, no excuses, now that six productive hours have been added to the weekdays. Speaking of school, how the hell do two kids run up $1500 of back-to-school expenses? Fifteen hundred dollars! This even more non-trivial figure includes bus fee ($500), clothes from Target ($300), and a very fancy $150 calculator from SchoolMart.com, which must be the Goldman Sachs of online school supply retailers. The gizmo is assured to last my son through high school; but why oh why did last year require a different, $75 calculator? I had thought there was a recession on. When I was in the 8th grade, there was Carter-era stagflation and my family was on a $12,000 yearly income. If I had incurred a $429 back-to-school bill ($1500 in 1977 dollars), I probably would have had to get a job to cover it myself. Our neighborhood, though comfortably suburban, contains some hard-up people -- dads who lost their jobs last year and are still looking, recent Asian immigrant families in tiny apartments off the interstate, etc. Is a $150 calculator on a public school manifest intended as a blunt tool with which to shame these people?
This is why I charge what I do to play at your wedding, in case you wondered. Does a single night of my talent offer as much value as a $150 calculator which is usable for at least 5 years? You should ask Miss Lila B., of the great state of Montana, whose sacred union I am gracing this Saturday, and on whose account I am at present knee-deep in a song called "You Make My Dreams Come True" by Hall and Oates. (Great song, by the way.) If you live up that way, please don't crash her wedding, but instead come to see me and the boys in Great Falls on Friday night at the Forde Nursery -- a little more info on the tour date page.
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13 comments
Robbie -
Be glad you got Hall & Oates for your wedding gig. At a wedding reception my band played last month, the happy couple danced their first dance to a kick-ass bluegrass version of "I Want You Around" by the Ramones! Hope you make it back to Raleigh soon.
KB
So this is what I have to look forward to. Melissa and I just finished school shopping for my 4 and 7 year old and that costed us a measly $500.00. That doesn't include a over priced calculator however. I'm sure as they get older, it will get more expensive.
Just come to Columbus Robbie. I will make sure you're paid handsomely. But you must bring that Gerald Dowd guy - otherwise it's a deal breaker.
You ran 3 miles each morning?
What do you think it will cost to play a wedding in the year 2014?
I can't for the life of me imagine why an eighth grader would need a $150 calculator.
Well, Dan, sometimes things you can't for the life of you imagine ... actually happen in real life, silly as it is. School is a racket pretty much everywhere in the U.S. Maybe the Amish do things on a shoestring but they might preach that the earth is flat, too. I dare say that the bulk of what they are taught is probably useful to them in their daily lives. So the world isn't flat. It's not like any of them are ever going to go all the way around it anyway.
I worked with a guy who grew up mostly in India. He wrote his assignments down in chalk on a slateboard every day. In the rainy season he had to keep the damn slateboard dry or oops! his homework assingment got washed away. Too bad, so sad. They had like NO money and some kids had no shoes but shit got taught.
The immigrant families in the tiny apts could probably do their taxes on an abacus if they had to. If they wonder what the $150 calculator is about just tell them it's politics. Some slob (or slob consensus) decided THAT's the model you have to buy and so it is. Once they get out of their tiny apts they can zoom around in natty clothes telling people what to buy and how. Everyone should have such freedom!
standardized calculator is for a level playing field so the kids are graded on their button pushing abilities not the calculators features. Does seem high priced, I do all my trig functions at work on a $40 Sharp.
You are living in the wrong place. What do your school taxes pay for? Here in the 'burgh you can not even ask kids to buy a pencil. Bus transportation is paid by the state. Calculators are provided for each student by the district. Mind you they must give them back at the end of the year.
Robbie-
Hope that wedding was great-but-ours will be a hard one to beat-everyone still talks about it-You and the Band were worth every penny! Come down to Washington again soon-we would love to see you-
Laura
Hopefully months with an R will be good for oysters and bad for torpor.
Wish I lived in Montana. And I would love to hear that Hall and Oates cover. I know the world is crazy and times are even crazier but I am praying you make it out to LA soon. As the kids say, "You da man!!" They are still saying that right?
Sorry I spoiled your rehearsal of Hall & Oats' YMMDCT at Forde Nursery, but I really do hate them. A friend of mine sings their songs to me just to bug me. My husband said that's what I get for sitting in the front row. (Your version was right on, by the way.)
So it wasn't Garfunkel & Oates? I'm confused.