[This entry is cross posted at ordinary-times.com]

I don’t want to alarm anybody, but our kids are on the cusp of vacation, assuming they paid attention in biology class and don’t have to repeat that fetal pig desecrating nightmare stuck in a lab all summer while their friends jeep blissfully to the lake to see what the girls in class look like partially clothed. I wouldn’t wish those institutionalime hydroclorosmelling tiles on anyone. They’ll be leaping all over the place while the adults drudge away. Child is father to the man – take the lesson. You may not get a whole summer but pilfered weekday added to a weekend serves as a salve of some sort. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday. Dissemble, obfuscate, fudge the truth, and gleefully trespass the norms and delicate pieties that preserve our hopefully durable civilization. Nearly all means are justified by the urge to prematurely escape the bonds of employment and settle in at a friendly neighborhood joint a few hours before even happy hour begins, lay comfortably in the grass at a local park, go to the lake “for a swim,” or God forbid, go for a light jog. It’s your weekend. Do with it as you will, but in homage to the mighty acronym may I suggest setting aside a moment for a little verse? It’s a particularly good way to pass time waiting on friends who may not run as roughshod over the delicate pieties and were not as successful as you were in engineering an early exit.

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It was pointed out to me last week that Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, and Anne Sexton all spent time in McLean Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, in Massachusetts. McLean also claims Ray Charles, David Foster Wallace, and James Taylor as alumni. That I went to the same high school as Kate Jackson seems suddenly less impressive. But I did. Bea Arthur once grabbed my ass.