In a hurry
by Andrew Smith

The other day I jumped out of bed in a hurry and fell flat on my face into the dresser. It seems my lovely wife had left a pair of her shoes at the foot of my bed, and I tripped over them.

I hadn't smacked my head on the dresser since the last time beer was on sale, so I opened my mouth to yell about it, but then I noticed that her shoes were laying right on top of a pair of mine. Actually, more like nine pairs of mine. I counted them slowly. There was a heaping pile of work boots at the foot of my bed. Instinctively I knew just where it was and how far I had to leap every morning to clear it. I could do it with my eyes closed. But that extra pair of dainty slippers on the top had messed me up.

I sat on the floor rubbing my noggin, and wondered how this sad situation had come to pass. How did I, an average working schmuck, end up with so many pairs of boots? And why couldn't I put them away neatly? Some flaw in my character, no doubt, but I didn't have time to worry about it then. It was my day off, and like most of the self-employed, I planned to spend it working. Pity me.

I rummaged through the boot pile, but couldn't find a suitable pair. No matter, I had another pile upstairs. Work boots never quite seem to go away. Even if they're held together with baling wire and duct tape you can still use them to run out to the wood shed in.

I found a useable pair upstairs, stuffed my feet in them, gulped my coffee and made a dash for my truck. I forgot my lunch, so I had to go back. Then I realized I'd forgot my map, so I went back again. A half mile down the road I remembered that I'd unloaded the truck the night before, but had neglected to load it back up again. I turned around with a screech and raced back home. I was mad, frustrated and in a hurry.

It seems like nothing good is ever done in a hurry: not food, not sex, not brain surgery. Life just wasn't meant to be lived that way. Yet it seems that I find myself in a hurry more than I ever wanted to be.

I don't know why I let life boss me around like that, but I do. There seems to be no day, hour or weekend long enough to fit all the things into it that I think I have to do. Time never quits running, and taunts us with it's shortening hours. Our lives burn away like fuses while we sleep. But I'll be damned if I'll be it's slave.

There really isn't time to hurry.

So I gave up. I put my work things away and abandoned all hope of forcing the day into financial productivity. Instead I went back in the house and asked the boy if he wanted to go for a hike. He agreed at once, and we decided to go down to the agate beds near Fairburn, to look for rocks.

It had just finished raining when we got there, and the road was slick with prairie mud. The truck zigged and zagged down it, then we got out to hike. Before we'd gone twenty paces our shoes were swelled to the size of footballs with accumulated red muck. I frowned, but the boy laughed with delight.

"Look at my feet!" he yelled, "They're gigantic!" I was trying to walk on the grass and keep out of the mess, but the boy declared that I was missing the fun. "Dad! Come down here! The mud is lots better!!"

"I don't want to get muddy."

"Why not?!" he asked incredulously.

The boy slipped and slopped through the mud, laughing, until he was covered pretty much from head to toe in various colors of prairie gumbo. The main difference between hiking with dad and hiking with mom is that dad lets you get as muddy as you want.

We looked for rocks. I wanted to find a black one, shaped like a mountain, with a white vein of quartz like a waterfall running down it. Call me picky, but I didn't find a keeper

We sat down for lunch and I farted. "Geeze Dad," the boy exclaimed, "what did you eat for breakfast, beans?!" Second grade has changed him. He wouldn't have said that back when he was a first grader.

When he finished his sandwich he said he was cold, and ready to go home. "No. We came to look for rocks, remember?" That's the other thing about hiking with dad. You can get as muddy as you want, but then you've got to wear it all day.

"But I'm cold." I got up and started climbing a mound of mud and stones, with him complaining behind me. But the climb warmed him up, and when we finally did leave I had to remind him that he was cold and wanted to go home. "Not now," he said.

On the way back he stomped through the mud again and arrived at the truck jubilantly declaring that he was the muddiest person there ever was. He may have been right. I used my ice scraper to clean as much of the gunk as I could off him, then put burlap down on the seats.

But there was no helping his shoes. They were unrecognizeable red blobs. "You'll have to wear your other pair to school, tommorrow," I said.

"I don't think I have another pair," he answered.

"I let you do that to your good shoes?" I said. "I'm in trouble."

"You shouldn't have let me," he agreed, seriously. "You're in trouble."

Driving back all I could think of was those nine pairs of work boots at the foot of my bed, and if I couldn't fit him into one somehow. But I knew there was no way. Heading home, it seemed like trouble was brewing on the horizon.

But I wasn't in a hurry anymore.