Old Dan Tucker

Three things:

1) I'm outta school! Woo-freakin'-hoo! Now I just need that million-dollar job and for them to quit screwing with me.

2) Got Bruce Springsteen's new one, The Seeger Sessions. The first song is "Old Dan Tucker." Holy cow, I used to sing that one in elementary school and haven't heard it since. The Boss done good.

3) I was reminded of a valuable lesson today by Zachary while I was trying to teach him something. I was trying to teach him (a 4-yr-old boy, mind you) to climb on things at the park to try to take a different point of view and have some unexpected experiences, so I climbed a sycamore overhanging the slightly swolen East Fork of the Whitewater River and sat down, knowing that he would want to follow me. He followed as expected. We sat and watched the world for a while, and he threw some small pieces of bark in the water. Then he asked me why the tree grew that way. I gave him an honest and plausible answer--that there had probably been another larger tree near it, so it grew that way to get out of the shade and into the sun. Then he said, quite earnestly, "Daddy, I think maybe it grew this way so that we could climb up here and sit on it to look at the water." I was slightly taken aback and felt somewhat foolish for not having thought of that myself. But I responded that he just might be right. Maybe it did. Maybe it was an indirect result, and maybe it didn't happen for him and me, specifically, but maybe it did grow that way in some attempt to help people relax and broaden their minds. Maybe it did grow that way to help us reconnect ourselves with the natural world. Maybe it did grow that way to better the day of a small boy and his parents. Who's to say it didn't?