1) Yesterday I was taking a white shirt off the clothesline on the back porch when I spotted a chigger on it, a red bug. And it reminded me of two things: that as a child on camping trips, the only thing to take care of a chigger bite was to paint it with clear nail polish to suffocate it, and b) the little song Daddy used to sing:
I woke up Sunday mornin' and looked upon the wall.
The cooties and the red bugs were havin' a game of ball.
The score was six to nothin', the cooties were ahead
The red bugs knocked a home run and knocked me out of bed.
Oh ho, it ain't gonna rain no more, no more, it ain't gonna rain no more!
Then how in the heck can I wash my neck if it ain't gonna rain no more?
2) It occurs to me that I'm actually spending Father's Day doing something my father used to do: walk around the house in my underwear.
3) My father and I differed in a lot of ways, but as I age I see more and more of the similarities. And I've noticed this for quite some time, but every year the focus sharpens a bit.