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

I’m writing this on a Thursday and I just checked my son out of school early. In the office there’s a sign in/out sheet by an extremely oversized digital clock and I filled in the names. The time was two after two. You couldn’t miss it. I put it down. Above our line were six sign outs all listing two o’clock. There were only eight kids out all day. Six at the same time seems like a lot. Different last names and handwriting.

It’s POETS Day, so do all the regular stuff. Piss Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday and bars, ballgames, swimming, and parks. Enjoy the weekend a few hours ahead of schedule. All that. But is there something I should know about Thursday? You wouldn’t call it POETF Day, but is there something like that? It’s just a lot of kids leaving at once. Is it a secret?

Read some verse. I’m going to look into this. If anyone wants to clue me in I can keep everything confidential.

***

I was planning on writing about Kingsley Amis without mentioning Philip Larkin. The two met at St. John’s College, Oxford, became roommates and formed a bond still strong when Amis said things at Larkin’s funeral. The little bits of their correspondence that I’ve read cracked me up. They shared a love of jazz, a distrust of posturing, and a wicked sense of humor. Often, when one is mentioned, the other pops up like a mischievous penny.