Pick Up Game

Work's been a bitch lately, with things picking up and our staff still down.

Then Jeff, our inside sales guy, takes the week off, so yours truly has to open the warehouse at 6 a.m. each morning.

On the third day in a row, with the alarm going off at 4:30 a.m., yet again, it felt like swimming from the bottom of a sludge filled well. I hit snooze twice in quick succession and then, somehow, shut it off.

I dreamed:

Dee-Wayne Brammage,* and I were playing basketball. But we didn't have a ball.

Instead, we started with a ring of keys and then halfway through, switched to a block of what looked like white cheddar cheese, wrapped in cellophane. Coulda been Havarti.

Despite the cheese, it was like old times, and we moved with the grace and joy of youthful exuberance, flowing like water over the cracked concrete, laughing and trash-talking the while.

"You can't play ball with a block of cheese, " I thought, and woke up. Then scrambled my ass off to work.

But the dream lingers on.

***

Dee-Wayne Brammage, I challenge you to a game of one-on-one, old man. Think you got anything left?

You just tell me where and when.

I'll bring the cheese.

*My oldest friend, whom I met in 2nd Grade at Columbia Grade School, where he was the shortest and I was the tallest. The rest is history.