Still time for derring-do for me and you

Hey, you! It’s August!

It’s not that I think you lack the ability to glance at the date on top of the newspaper you’re holding right now. So please don’t be offended that I brought it up. Judging by letters to the editor, some folks get their knickers in a twist over pretty much anything lately.

I only mention the month because July slipped past me somehow. June, too. Maybe it slipped past you as well. So consider this a “heads up.”

Hey, you! It’s August, for goodness sake!

Call it the Covid coma we’ve all been locked into for the past year and a half, or call it whatever you want. It’s just that it’s August already — in fact, it’s pretty much the acme of August just before the downhill slope toward September — and I can’t understand how we got here so soon already.

When I was a kid, August screamed its presence, starting in mid-July when the cicadas started shrilling from the trees. We called them “back-to-school bugs,” because when you heard them you knew at least half of the summer was gone, and there was precious little time left to accomplish all the feats of derring-do you had planned for the summer back in May.

In August, Mom started watching for sales on kids’ clothing and shoes, and she started dragging you out to Goldblatt’s or Wieboldt’s to try things on. If you were lucky, you might convince her to use the exit that led past the nuts-and-candy kiosk, but the lingering taste of cashews and caramel on your tongue was little consolation for the realization that (for goodness sake!) it’s August already.

And in August, you remembered all the promises you made to yourself back in early June, when the summer stretched open before you, and you vowed to make each day an epic adventure. By mid-August, you started to realize that your epic-event clock was ticking too fast to get it all done.

In August, you started to suspect that you wouldn’t catch a raccoon and teach him tricks. Oh, you had caught plenty of snakes and even kept one or two as pets in that aluminum trough in the back yard, but by mid-August, Dad was starting to hint that it was time to give King and Prince their slithery freedom back in the prairie where you found them.

With the clock ticking and the calendar squares sliding by, our feats of derring-do got all the more daring in August than they were in June. It was understandable why Larry Fiorentino and I opted not to jump off the roof in June, because wearing a cast on your arm or leg would be a disaster starting in early summer. But in August, mere days before the start of classes in the fall, a cast or a splint would mark you as a heroic rebel if you sauntered in wearing it on the first day of school. And it might even get you out of PE class until the gym cooled down in late September.

But that was then, and this is now. Here I am, with seven decades of childish behavior under my belt, it’s mid-August (for goodness sake!) and my feats of summertime derring-do haven’t gone much beyond choosing the 750-piece jigsaw puzzle over the 500-piece. And I still haven’t taken the time or the initiative to learn why daring feats are called “derring-do” instead of daring-do.

For the record, I did catch a groundhog this summer, which is almost as good as a raccoon—if you can call it “catching” when an animal wanders into your open garage door and takes sanctuary in the corner. I tried to teach him a trick—a simple one, like: “There’s the door you came in through. Go back through it and don’t come back.” And, for the record, I guess he learned his lesson pretty well, because he’s gone now. But still, it was a hollow victory, because when I was a kid I imagined animal tricks involving tightropes, nose-juggling balls, things like that.

Dreams fulfilled are never quite what you imagined them to be, are they?

Anyway, it’s August already, and September’s not far behind. I’ve achieved one of my long-held summertime goals, if you count the groundhog. Have you?

That’s why I thought I’d send you this heads-up, to remind you that it’s August, for goodness sake, in case you hadn’t noticed.

Take hope. Summer’s not over yet — not quite. There’s still time left, though it’s waning fast. If you play your derring-do cards right, you can still get a cast on your arm or leg before the snow flies.

Get out there and get cracking!

Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.

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