Planning To Be Spontaneous...Someday

Remember the days when a good hot day was fun? You got into your bathing suit and jumped around the neighbor’s sprinkler, if you weren’t lucky enough to have a neighbor with a pool, and maybe somebody’s Mom had ice pops in the freezer, or the Good Humor truck would come around, and that was enough.

Yesterday I was trying to remember those days. It was hot (though not as hot as today) and we went to the local volunteer firemen’s fund-raising barbecue, and ate chicken and corn on the cob and lost a lot of money on raffle tickets and watched a bunch of neighbors with big bellies drink beer and watched a bunch of kids dancing through a sprinkler set up on the lawn.

God, I wanted to do that. Drink beer. And run through the sprinkler.

“So go for it,” Husband said, watching my longing looks.

I thought about it for a second. The beer wouldn’t be the best thing to have with my various medications, or for my fibro. And I also thought about my sneakers, they were my good sneakers, and then they’d be wet, and covered with grass clippings, and I’d get them all over my car and all over the treadmill later, and it would make a big mess. And I was wearing light gray cotton knit pants, if they got wet they’d twist up heavy and clumpy around my calves, and…

When did I get so freaking old?

Maybe I was just born old. Except for one (ok, maybe two) brief periods of my life where I did some irresponsible things, I’ve been fairly buttoned up, quiet, and not the type of person who’d run through the sprinkler with the kids. In fact if I remember correctly, I don’t think I even did that when I was a kid. I had a bathing suit. I swam in the pool, I ate ice pops from the Good Humor truck (actually, the orange Creamsicles were my favorite), but spontaneous, I wasn’t. When I was a young child, I’d cry if I thought we were doing one thing and then someone changed the plan. I wanted to know what to expect. I still want to know what to expect. Every doctor, every bodyworker I go to, I ask them to tell me what they’re going to be doing before they do it, so I can mentally prepare to have my hamstrings stretched or extra pressure on the knot under my scapula or an acupuncture needle stuck in my fingertip. I bring too many things when I go somewhere overnight, and for a whole week – forget about it. That’s why God invented suitcases with wheels.

The closest I came to spontaneous was during one of those two adult irresponsible periods, where I went on a road trip with a guy I’d been dating only a short time, and one of his buddies. I had no idea where we were going, or for how long, I just knew that the buddy had a convertible and a gig somewhere in the Adirondacks and I really wanted to get out of Syracuse for at least one night or, hopefully, the whole weekend. And I really wanted a ride in a convertible.

I brought nothing but the clothes on my back, and in my purse, a toothbrush, deodorant, a pair of clean underpants and a t-shirt rolled up very, very small. Even still, I agonized for a while before I made that final determination. I was too shy to ask what the plan was beyond the gig. It was a two-some hour ride to the place he was playing. If I packed a bag, did that mean I was being presumptuous, that this would be an overnight? It was such a casual invitation; something like, “let’s go hear my friend play tonight.” None of us had enough money for a hotel room. Would I look like an idiot if I brought an overnight bag? Still, I felt this was the safest alternative. It was just a purse. No one would have to know what was inside my purse. Yet my girl-scout background couldn’t let me bring nothing at all.

Turned out we were gone the whole weekend.

Turned out the gig was in a beautiful rustic-type mountain lodge, in a town I don’t remember.

Turned out the guy was so buddy-buddy with the owner that he not only gave us three rooms for free, (business was slow) but also let us have free reign at the bar and in the kitchen after hours. We invented drinks and made sandwiches and told jokes and I had…get this…fun.

And was returned on Sunday night to my Syracuse domicile unmolested and unscathed, though grateful for a hot shower and a change of clothes.

I would never do anything like that now (if I wasn’t married, of course). I’d wonder if the guy was secretly a serial killer and I’d want the phone number of the place we were going and I’d ask how long we were staying and plan accordingly. Probably I’d Google both of them for any priors, too. And bring my Triple A card.

But I know I have a few sprinkler runs in me yet.

I just have to plan when to use them.