A Slight Delay

For me, for whatever reason, the kitchen’s always been the focal point of “home.” And kitchen tables seem to be where everything happens. Never mind if you have a dining room; it never fails that during family gatherings and whatnot, the kitchen table’s where everybody gathers to pick, gab, and pick some more.

It doesn’t have to be anything fancy. My favorite kitchen table, in fact, was wood-grained formica surrounded by inexpensive wooden chairs (whose thin seats had the effect of amplifying my grandfather’s flatulence roughly to that of a steam whistle), and sat in my grandmother’s kitchen. The tabletop saw its share of Legos and Parcheesi games, to say nothing of countless meals; under the table was just as good, serving as hiding place and makeshift radio station (with me as the “announcer,” reading from the funnies or anything else that happened to be laying around).

On second thought, I take back that “for whatever reason” back in the first paragraph. I think that’s all the reason I need.

I keep wondering when summer will start this year. I know that on the calendar it starts on June 21, same as every other year. The problem is, that’s not when summer starts for me.

For quite a while now, I’ve always pegged the start of summer to a single auspicious occasion. The bloom of a particular flower, perhaps, or the song of some bird? Oh, no, that’s far too pedestrian. The only thing that will do (for me, anyway) is the first warm day that I hear “The Boys Are Back In Town” by Thin Lizzy on the radio.

And it has to be the radio. No CD’s or MP3’s. That would be cheating, since I own “Dedication” on disc, and ripped the song to MP3 long ago. So it has to be the radio. It’s a bit of a crap shoot–sort of like figuring out springtime by a groundhog, for instance–but when you get those goosebumps when Phil Lynott sings… That is a summer day, and a damn good one, at that.