by Kevin Burton
So I missed my window. Again. As Stockard Channing’s character Betty Rizzo sang in “Grease,” “there are worse things I could do….”
This here blog, Page 7, turned seven years old July 20 and I didn’t usher it into year eight properly, with a birthday post.
One reason was that my main computer was in the ‘puter hospital having a virus removed. Another reason, the real one, is that I didn’t write a post in advance.
And the reason behind that, a sad one, is that my mother died in May and my mind still isn’t functioning that way that I am used to.
If you see a lot of posts back to back to back to back, where I am editing and posting someone else’s material instead of writing my own stuff, you can bet I am just hurting. I will be back, God willing.
You know, I don’t know why I ever started a blog in the first place. I mean, I keep my mouth shut, a lot. I have a very high level of “who asked me?” in my “forma de ser” as we say in Spanish, or “way of being.”
(Wouldn’t it be lovely if a lot more people had that who-asked-me thing, by the way? Wouldn’t Facebook be a sunnier place?)
Why would/should anybody necessarily care what I think about transitive verbs, the Dave Clark Five, the Big Red Machine and the highways and byways of middle America?
My wife Jeannette doesn’t remember specifically, the time in 2019 when I said, “you know what, I’m going to start a blog.”
“What I remember is you said you wanted to keep your writing skills up,” she said.
Seven years on, I have accomplished at least that, I think, though I could have kept my writing going without inflicting it on the entire world via WordPress.
I couldn’t have known in 2019 that we would soon have a worldwide health crisis called Covid 19. The blog saved my sanity during the worst of that.
Also, bet you five dollars I have more toilet paper than you do.
I obviously didn’t finish a post, but I did at least begin bouncing around ideas for a seventh-anniversary story. I was going to say something about a “seven-year ache,” and build around that.
“Seven Year Ache” is a 1981 song (number 1 country, 22 pop) by Roseanne Cash. I don’t usually go for country music but I love that song and I have a tape of Cash’s greatest hits.
See also, “My Baby Thinks He’s A Train,” by Cash.
Yes, I said a tape of Cash’s greatest hits.
Well, I don’t know what that means, really, seven-year ache. Is that a reaction to a seven-year itch?
The song contains the lyric “face down in a memory,” which is not a bad description of Page 7. I hear “face down in a memory” and I immediately want to hear what else this person might have to say.
“Looking for something you might have forgot” is another lyric from the song. Maybe that’s a motivation for my writing Page 7.
I’ve made some friends through writing Page 7 and through reading other people’s blogs. I should do a lot more of that. I should also make more of an effort to get my punctuation right.
Punctuation. They are “the little marks that use their in-flu-ence, to help a sentence make more sense,” according to The Electric Company TV show.
I gave some thought to ending the blog abruptly on its seventh birthday. Recently I watched on You Tube, the final episode of “Later” with Bob Costas as host. Costas explained simply that it just felt like the right time to stop.
Those Later episodes are another thing that got me through quarantine with the spirit intact.
But all good things– M*A*S*H*, the reign of the Big Red Machine, the life of my mother. Must come to an end.
Maybe now that Mom is gone, I should do other things, get a job, or learn to work the saxophone, or something.
As you can see, I didn’t end the blog. And I hope you think Page 7 was and is a good thing.
That chunk of time you traded in to read this post (and the others), has a value, a high value. I never take it for granted that anybody will read me, and I appreciate it greatly when they do.
Page 7 also competes for your attention with literally millions of other sources of information. I promise to try to make it worth your while.
Think of a woman searching through her wardrobe, wanting to dress to impress, looking for just the right sartorial sequence. That will be me on Page 7 in year eight, looking for the sexiest words in the world.
Page 7 