You Don't Need To Rush Off

Things out here at the half acre are very slow paced. The speed of life isn't the speed of light. It varies wherever you go, of course. In the city you have your fast women, fast cars, and rat race. Out here on the acre -- OK, half acre -- we have one slow woman, an old car, and an occasional rat. Mice, mostly, to tell the truth.

We are very plain folk, unassuming, not even slightly self-conscious of how plain and unassuming we are. The fact that I can even make the statement seems to contradict it, but only because your logic is too fast. Our logic out here is like everything else, slow, and willing to stretch with the circumstances.

We really are not in much of a hurry about anything. Whether it's cleaning out the garage, the shed, the basement, our crawl space attic, doing anything, if we can put it off till next year, so much the better. We drawl when we talk, not because it's exactly natural to us, but because we're not in a big hurry to say anything. We have entire visits with friends that consist of dozing off in our chairs.

This slow pace helps keep us in good health, they say. Grandma's 104 of course and she knows it. I've heard her say so many times, "I'm 104. I'm 104." We knew a lady -- used to live over at the community-living, senior place -- and she was 105. She did the same thing. The biggest activity of her life was this, having the ends of spoons cut off, then she'd bend them and make rings out of them. She'd say something on that subject once in a while. But mostly all she ever said to you was, "I'm 105. I'm 105. I'm 105." Now, I could listen to that all day, like the next guy, but in 105 years it seems like something would've happened to you that'd be a little more interesting!

I have to slow down. I got worked up there a bit. Because I'm like John Boy Walton in certain ways, except I talk with the same voice now that I'm old as I did when I was young. Like him I can do that whole bemused, detached thing of recounting what we used to do back on the Slump half acre. But unlike him I'm still there -- or, that is to say, I returned. Some of my worldly ways -- which were few -- are still at the surface, as I said above, leering at fast women, wanting a fast car, the rat race. O, for one of those fast women-- But I digress.

The slow pace affects the visits, dozing off, etc. And the slow pace also affects us when a visit has to end. We have a saying that I'd like to leave you with, which is, "You don't need to rush off." If you've visited 10 minutes, like on a delivery and an errand and have to hurry away, we don't say much about that. But if you've been here six hours, seven hours, that's when it comes out, "You don't need to rush off." I guess that's natural to slow people.