Unpaid Bill

It’s no secret, far from an elephant in the room, even, that people are more divided than ever.

Whether you attribute the situation to tribalism or a more caustic “ism,” the gaps between us are real, often deep, frequently wide.

Too deep, too wide to cross? That’s a matter of choice. As, of course, is everything when you’re a person who lives and not merely exists, who actively progresses and not passively goes for a ride.

The first choice is to acknowledge that the notion of shared experience is an incredibly flawed one. You can’t experience my life any more than I can be a Blackfoot or a Zulu or a woman.

We can choose to listen and empathize, not as someone else’s hero or savior or scapegoat, but as a fellow traveler.

I want to know who you are, what you’ve experienced through all your senses and through all your emotions and thoughts. Your experiences really can’t be shared, even if we were at the same event side by side, because our previous experiences will shape how we react, internalize, commit to memory.

Your memories, and your interpretation of how your experiences shaped who you are … those, perhaps, you will choose to share with me, so I may know you a bit better.

I hope to accomplish this with humility.

First and foremost, thank you for weekends, whenever they arrive, Sabbath or otherwise. Thank you for coffee and lunch breaks. For OSHA.

Thank you for this holiday.

Working people’s contributions aside, there’s a bigger significance to this weekend. This is back-to-school season, or as retailers have been saying since July 4, BTS.

Having somebody in school means packing lunches or slipping the lunch money into a pouch where asshole bullies can’t find it. Checking homework, first over the student’s shoulder and next via Google or our professorial friends who know we’re mangy at math. Disabling the snooze button, because the schoolbus maintains a tight schedule. Filling shopping carts at Target and Staples, in person or online.

Thank you, FedEx and UPS.

We don’t have anybody in school anymore, PhD candidate notwithstanding. Still, the rhythm of the seasons is guided not by the angle of the sun but by the bell or buzzer or tone for the first class of the day on the first day of the school year. 

As former students, we all feel that tug. We’re conditioned from pre-K into the workaday world to shift gears on Labor Day.

Beaches close. So do carousels and Skee-Ball. Pizza doesn’t taste as good.

Politicians shift into eighth gear for Silly Season.

Of course it’s manufactured. Of course it’s Pavlovian or Skinnerian. The air really isn’t hissing out of the balloon (not with a near-heat wave kicking in).

That doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Because it sure feels real.

OK, that’s a deceptive teaser headline.

It’s not Pumpkin Spice coffee — sorry, not a latte guy — that I dislike. It’s the timing.

Go out to a farm in the Garden State and look for pumpkins. They ain’t ready yet. The zucchini are still winning the battle of agricultural manifest destiny. The tomatoes still own the title of most colorful, with sunflowers and zinnias close behind. The corn is as high as … well, R&H fans know the rest.

I’ll swill P.S. in October, when the third drawer in my dresser reopens and I retrieve my sweaters. I’ll take it intravenously, as I do any sort of coffee (except hazelnut).

Yes, the aroma tempts me now. The hype grabs my attention.

But not as much as 90-degree days with cut-it-with-a-machete humidity. And as long as those show up in the 10-day forecast, P.S. I don’t love you. 

P.S. — as in postscript — Hot Coffee. Iced Tea.  There are rules.