June

A couple of things that bother me about the month of June.

"Congratulations grads." Youth are graduating from high school, graduating from college, signs are up all over the place wishing them well in full knowledge that the truth will be quite different.

I wish them well. I honestly do. What a great spot to be in your life. A high school diploma and hopes of advanced education. A college diploma and hopes of a professional career. Or a high school diploma and hopes a of a solid blue collar career.

Brief aside: My brother in law - Danny - nailed it 100 hundred years ago. We were sitting out on my porch enjoying alcoholic beverages and he said: "You are not really a blue collar guy, and you are not really a white collar guy. I don't know who you are." Or something quite similar.

I don't consider him a genius, but then again I do not look into the mirror to see a genius either.

He was dead on goddamn accurate.

And the harsh irony is that in 2015 I still do not really know who I am.

Anyway..............every June for 16 million years youth have graduated and then go on to alcoholism and broken lives and divorce and broken dreams and dead end soul sucking jobs and underachievement and money troubles.

That is the way life works for most of us.

How is it that we cannot learn?

How is it that generation after generation gets spit out into the jaws of reality and end up self medicating for fifty years until shovel fulls of dirt cover up their embarrassment?

I don't get it.

I am one of them.

It frustrates me that the human race cannot advance and/or adapt.

What is learning? Why does it not occur genetically? Why is it that the lessons learned from the pain and sorrow and frustration of broken lives is not passed along to succeeding youth?

Or is it the awful truth that the lessons are never learned?

Are we that blind? That stupid?

Another problem with June is that Dads are teamed up with Grads.

Nobody else is teamed up with Mothers on Mother's Day.

Mother's Day is a high holy day. It is sacred. More sacred than the birth of Jesus or the death of Jesus.

Dads share road signs with Grads.

Mothers get taken out to dinner at fancy restaurants or served high quality burritos at home, prepared by Dad.

Dads get Brut.........................by Faberge.

One more June thing.

Strawberries.

I love strawberries. I adore them. They are my favorite fruit.

I am convinced that my friends questioned my sexual preferences as a child because when we got ice cream and everybody else was ordering hot fudge sundaes, I was ordering strawberry sundaes.

With marshmallow. Not whipped cream.

Every June I get all ramped up to buy fresh strawberries and I never do.

I'm not talking strawberries at Shaw's.

I'm talking strawberries at road side stands where they grow their own locally.

I did not buy one container of fresh, local strawberries this year once again.

Anyway, that is what June represents to me.

It is over now. It is so last month.

I am wrestling with July and trying to make it stick.

We shall see.