Rocketboy

I can recall summers in South Louisiana being such a magical time. My friends and I used to camp out in my front yard, and rough it. We were just over ten feet from my parents house, but we were men and we knew it. The nights were filled with Capri Sun by the case and half eaten, but all opened, bags of various and sundry chips & cookies, real staples for the untamed wilderness that was my yard. We used to sit around the fire pit and tell stories and epic tales of how our lives would be and what careers we would pursue... Astronauts, engineers, mad scientists, and the first man to ride his bike to the moon, they were sizable goals, but at that time they seemed totally feasible. I mean, I could see how a person could strap a few bottle rockets to a rusty old Schwin, have a pal light them off, and before long you were there. The moon would be yours and there you could bask near the sea of tranquility and sip on a strawberry fanta and eat cheeseballs. At the time, the guys at NASA seemed like they were just being overly safe. A massive rocket? Space suits? Who needed all that crap anyways. It was a time when the heat of the summer evenings was pleasant (or seemed more so anyways). 

Now that I'm a little older, in age anyways, I can't imagine feeling that way about the heat. It is literally hotter than two weasels fucking in a wool sock outside. I mean seriously, to walk outside is to feel like someone has draped a cliché bear skin rug over you, and forced you to walk about with it on your entire body. I can't even walk to my car without beads of sweat, and it's less than twenty feet from any given building I am in. And never did I imagine that heat could cause such pandemonium in my life.

Air conditioning is a must have here, if you don't have it, you can't function. In the past month, I have spent upwards of a thousand dollars getting our AC unit fixed on three different occasions. The most recent of which I still struggle to comprehend. How a person can come into your home, clean a few grills, and then proceed to burn out a $500 fan motor is beyond me, but yes it happened and it sucked thoroughly. But it is this repair man that created a chain of events that at the thought makes me feel as though fate has taken a baseball bat to my life. Aside from the expense of fixing the unit, he suggested that we put a window unit in our bedroom in order to only cool that room at night. It made sense, why run a massive outdoor unit when a small one could keep our bedroom cool. So we proceeded to do this, and in doing so we realized that the room wasn't very well insulated. I figured this as much because our bedroom was an addition and previously a sun room. It being a sun room it has seven windows, which brought us to the next conclusion of covering those up so it doesn't get as hot and keeping more cool air trapped. This in turn led my father-in-law to building us custom shudders for those windows. My only request was that he not put them up until he had latches to hold them down. Of course he put them up without them in a hurry to avoid air being lost in a home that isn't his. This leads us to last night. It has been incredibly hot, and to have some rain is great, but last night the weather got pretty rough. This morning I woke up at 3:23 am to the sound of three shutters right behind my head beating the shit out of my house. This combined with thunder and heavy rains was more than enough to keep me up. So I decided to go and sleep in the living room. The living room is much quieter, I can drown out the weather with cartoons and get some sleep. Well...unfortunately, because of the window unit being in the room with the thermostat, the rest of the house was easily over 80 degrees. So it was a choice between being hot and sweaty, but have tv and possibly be able to sleep, or go back into the cold room with thunder and shudders pummeling my head. 

In the end, I chose the armpit heat of my living room with the cat. And us sweating it out together is what made me really contemplate things in my life and recall my childhood and camping with my friends. What happened to those days of dreams and camping and enjoying life? What happened to my life that I lost that since of adventure? As I sat there in the dark, the clouds pouring rain onto my house, thunder surrounding myself and the cat I really wished I was on my old bike. I wished that I would have found someone in my life to support me, make me a better person, and if nothing else...just light my bottle rockets. Even is was only to stand back, watch the rockets go off in a blaze of glory, melting portions of the back tire and spokes and after all the smoke had cleared I wouldn't have moved an inch. But it wouldn't be about having not succeeded, but rather about having someone to believe in me. This is the person I strive to be for others, and one day I hope to find someone like this, to pick me up when I fail, smile when I succeed and be there to tell me, we'll get em' next time.