Mental Summer Break

When you find yourself chasing parked cars, picking broccoli out of your molars using the rusty bumpers of ancient Corvettes, perhaps a vacation is in order. That’s where I found myself a week ago, hopped up on iced coffee (or is it ice coffee?) humming the spiritual chord progression of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” at an octave even the birds in the area viewed as painfully disruptive. Taking time off as a valued, cherished, and beloved member of any team is not a simple procedure. People depend on me. Without me, they might consider themselves oddly competent when they’re not.

I had to get away. I couldn’t read another lengthy email from an underling, promptly dictating an adamant response only to watch as my live-in AI manufactured numerous inventive typos. This isn’t merely a “ducking” affair either. It went beyond that. “Rat custard,” “sun of a kitsch,” “peace of Schmidt.” The last one obviously a reference to retired baseball Hall of Famer, Michael Jack Schmidt. You might ask why must my responses all be littered with profane insults? I wouldn’t say littered.

I could’ve taken the obvious route, boarding a cruise ship bound for wherever, praying each night for smooth sailing and a sanitary buffet. But that’s not the sort of buffet I had in mind for this mental break. My focus was squarely on one, James William Buffet, the preeminent promotor of vacations and vacation-related culture. Listening to his entire discography gave me great insight into what living on island time would truly entail and how it would affect my large collection of clocks.

I had always dismissed the rabid Parrotheads, believing they were a twisted cult, obsessed with decapitating the only birds able to give us a little guff. Frankly, they scared me. Anyone living permanently on vacation was someone to be feared, someone with nothing to lose – except their suitcase with sunscreen in the triple digits of SPF.

When I discovered that there were no actual severed parrot heads and this was not the Bermuda shorts wearing wing of Bohemian Grove, I got a little more comfortable. So I locked myself in a 12 X 12 break room last week, one pried open with a crowbar that must’ve been left behind by the previous tenant. I played “Margaritaville” – oh, I don’t know, I lost count somewhere around Wednesday. Figure it’s a 3-minute song that I played for 5 straight days. By Friday I was feeling amazingly refreshed. There was no initiation, nor was there an unwanted appearance by the Parrothands, a radical splinter group who’ve made their presence known at more and more concerts of late. 

All I can say, under advice from my legal team, is that it’s good to be back.