Did you ever notice how spring makes some people nuttier than a jar of Planter’s Party Mix, whereas some go goofy in fall, and others act silly in summer, and still others get weird in winter?
I must confess I’m in the latter group. When winter comes I hibernate like a grizzly bear, and brother, don’t try to wake me up — grrr! But when spring finally arrives I return to normal and leave my cave to go salmon fishing on the banks of a nearby stream. I stun the fish with a swipe from my huge furry paw, then gut them with my razor-sharp claws and pop them still dripping into my mouth. If only I could get rid of that yucky “fishy” taste!
But I digress. I was going to tell you about my wacky teenagers — or should I say sex machines? Every year they get spring fever so bad you’d think it was a terminal illness instead of nature’s way of saying “Beer drinkers make better lovers.” It gives this middle-aged mom the strangest feeling to watch them go through their elaborate adolescent courting rituals, rubbing their hollow legs together to produce a shrill song, or performing complicated dances to display the fire-engine-red bony crests on top of their heads, or building immense love bowers deep in tropical rainforests out of twigs, moss and brightly colored stones. Kids sure are different these days.
Remember how it was when we were young, back in the late Pleistocene? Before we girls could even contemplate a date, our parents had to meet our prospective beau and ask him everything but which side he dressed on (Dad would always check that manually). Then while the poor boy blinked away tears of frustration, they’d inflict a paralyzing bite and use their posterior silk glands to spin him inside a gossamer cocoon where they could store him against the hungry days ahead. Have things really changed so much, or am I just being old-fashioned?
And what about those kooky metrics? My too-bright-for-their-britches teens find them a cinch with their ten fingers to count by, but unless I cut two of mine off I’ll be using the base twelve system the rest of my life. Besides, I just can’t imagine anyone saying, “Give her 2.54 centimeters and she’ll take 1.61 kilometers.” How zany can you get? If we’re not careful, pretty soon we’ll be measuring feline toiletries in “kitty liters”!
I guess I haven’t really said what I started out to say about spring, but it’s hard to think warm, loony thoughts when your anything-for-kicks offspring have turned your kitchen into a recombinant-DNA lab and made you the subject of the experiment. What won’t they think of next?
