(Originally posted on the website Heron Flight)

TIME GOES BY SO QUICKLY. While I am still in summer mode, the air has begun to chill and some of the trees are changing color (note the photo on this page). Everything is still predominantly green. But there are touches of color here and there, kind of like the tufts of white hair that are noticeable in my beard as I’ve been growing it out lately. It’s not enough of a change to say, “That’s it. The season is over. It’s time for the gloom of winter.” It’s just enough to serve as a reminder that things don’t last forever.

Even though autumn is my favorite time of the year, it seems that I am becoming increasingly resistant to its onset, not willing to give up the hot, hazy, weekend afternoons, not eager to miss my daughters when they leave after summer break, not so readily comfortable with the inevitable changes which the passing of time brings. I want to stay in the sunshine a while longer. Keep the sun up until nine each night. And for heaven’s sake, let’s not change our clocks and rob ourselves of evening light this year!

I think my resistance to fall is indicative of my long existing dislike of change. Sameness is easy. Familiar is comfortable. Why go mucking about with life and making it difficult for yourself? Adjusting. Coping. Reorienting. Forgot all that! Status quo. Same old same old. Nice. Then again, with that mindset I never would have discovered how fantastic sushi is, or how gratifying spicy Thai food is, or how semi-tolerable pickles have become after hating them for 44 years. Yes, I’ve started to like them. Odd.

More significant than a dislike of change is my increasing anxiety aging, accompanied by a more noticeable denial of aging. Notice, I did not say “getting old”. There is no “old” in relation to myself in my mind. It’s just not right. It doesn’t fit. It’s a label and a condition that I refuse to take on. I am beyond the old Oil of Olay commercial slogan of “Grow old gracefully? I intend to fight it every step of the way!” I intend to ignore it and it will go away.

Guess what… my beard is turning gray. So are an increased number of hairs on my head. That’s not such a big deal. Unless you continually have a decreasing number of hairs on your head like I do! The fleeing hairs are causing the proportion of gray ones to advance too quickly. IT’S NOT FAIR!

Fairness and aging philosophies aside, the leaves are beginning to change and time is flying. It seems like it was just yesterday that my daughters were here on summer break. But it’s already been a month and a half since they left – the same as the total amount of time they spent here. They have already finished a full month of school. I am already making plans to go to Georgia to see them for Halloween, dressed as Big Bird, I might add. (No, not the whole way there, silly!)

I suspect that the days ahead, at least between now and the middle of December, are going to speed on by at an unyielding speed. The reason? I am back to school myself. I am back with a vengeance too! I am taking four classes. That is enough credits to be considered a full-time student. That is enough of a workload to be considered a full-time IDIOT! “I want to be SMART!” “Well, Mr. Snyder, that was a pretty DUMB thing to commit yourself to sitting in classrooms for 9 hours per week for 16 weeks AND an additional online course.” Hey! Ya know what? All the cool kids are doing it and I gave into the peer pressure. My daughter is enrolled full-time in online classes from the University of Phoenix. My son is enrolled full-time at the same school I’m at. And my brother is enrolled ULTRA-full-time in 6 classes! What? I’m supposed to do nothing but work full-time, be a dad, write, play music (now and then), read lots of books, do housework… and NOT go to school too? No, I want to be cool like the rest of them.

There are other factors making time zip by. And other reasons why I feel I’m getting old. Oops. I meant reasons why I’m suspicious that I MIGHT be “aging”, like an achingly painful shoulder problem that has been plaguing me for the entire month of September, and persistent asthma problems, and weight gain, etc. But we have plenty of time for me to write about those thrilling topics at a later date… like after I catch my breath (or not with asthma) after final exams in December. However, I’ll try to step out of the whirlwind now and then to write before time carries us that far.

Until we meet again… Be cool. Be at peace. Take time to smell the roses. Stay forever young.

(Originally posted on the website Heron Flight)

Just when I was tempted to change my opinion of people (meaning people at large), which most likely was induced by a rather rare night of good sleep, upon retrieving the daily paper from the front porch steps, my opinion intensified. There to greet my newly awakened eyes was a headline that reinforced my assessment that the human race is made up of sick, twisted, illogical individuals:

HEADLINE: “6 SKULLS, SEVERED HAND LEAD TO STRIPPER ARREST!”

Articles about severed hands are not what I want waving at me from the front page of the newspaper first thing in the morning! It was a fine morning until I saw that headline. Opening that paper was like releasing a storm cloud into the otherwise cloud-free morning sky, tainting the sunrise, dampening the pleasant scent of the jasmine bush on the porch, and souring my assessment of mankind (womankind included).

Let’s step back and look at what the paper reported.

First, the headline said it was a stripper the police arrested. Suddenly, my perspective on strippers was challenged. This was not just a girl who would jiggle her goodies for my delight. This wasn’t one who was merely eager to slink-off her bra and show me her nearly ready to sag 31-year-old breasts while I pushed a buck into her crotch. No, this stripper wanted more! She wasn’t satisfied with the tips! She wanted the hand that stuffed them as well! (What the hell does she have in there that it could castrate a man at the wrist?)

Now, the newspaper said that the police “found the crudely severed hand in a foot-tall mason jar on a table in the basement.” They described it as large and possibly belonging to a white guy. One of the stripper’s roommates said that the residents of the house named the hand “Freddie”. They actually named it! They must have felt some amount of endearment toward the dismembered appendage. At least that is more respectful than calling it “Thing” as the Addams Family called their creepy hand that lived in a box.

Also in the house were six human skulls, neatly arranged on a shelf among other animal skulls. The police described the finding of the skulls as less “bizarre” than the discovery of the hand because “human skulls can be readily purchased on the internet.” Yes, let’s discount the skulls because the internet has normalized their availability to the average consumer. No big deal, they are only HEADS! Look, if a woman de-hands me, it’s one thing. I can probably make it through life and even continue going to strip clubs, using my other hand to continue pounding bucks into crotches. But, if she wants my head, that’s a different situation. There’s no point in having hands if my head is gone. I think someone should be a little more concerned about the skulls! Where are these internet sites that sell skulls anyway? www.heads-r-us.com? www.e-head.com? Are there headhunters in the Amazon Valley? www.amazon.com? Wait… What kind of a person would buy human skulls? (Boy, this girl is going to make me lose all faith in strippers.)

One of the most disturbing things in this news article was the reason the police were called to the stripper’s house in the first place. First the paper said, an “emotionally disturbed man” who lived at the house was “threatening to hurt himself.” No, let them rephrase that, “A caller told dispatchers a man living there was TRYING TO KILL HIMSELF WITH A HAMMER.” No! Don’t do it! Someone talk him out of it! Don’t jump! A hammer?? He was trying to kill himself with a hammer?? What has this world come to? You can’t kill yourself with a hammer! The worst you could do would be to pummel yourself hard enough in the skull to make you just a little more retarded than you already are! Kill yourself with a hammer! Good Lord! Is this what the human race has been reduced to: selling our heads on the internet and trying to kill ourselves with hammers? I’m throwing this paper back out on the porch and going back to sleep until evolution helps the rest of the world catch up!

The stripper decided to not tell the police anything. The one who bares all bared nothing this time. “She has refused to tell the police where or how she obtained the body parts.” Why waste her breath when they can just Google it? (I searched on “buy human skull” and Google gave me 4,940,000 results – in .20 seconds! One of the top listings said, “Yes, you can buy human bones. Please see the Human Skull section of our website to browse available… “) The stripper was “released after posting a $100,000 bail bond.” Any of you guys want to “give her a hand” paying that back if she defaults?