Here I am at the desk, yet again in my night gown, in the middle of the day. Usually the afternoon storms commence around rush hour but this week they've been showing up closer to noon than I like. We at least get to do our water exercises before the skies darken. Today's water was colder than we liked but we sucked it up and carried on! One of our original participants, in the group from back in the day when we worked out in the teen pool at 8:15 in the morning, returned to class. Randy, in his late 70s, had been out all of last season after suffering a fall in his home and then undergoing surgeries and other procedures to get him whole again. Welcome back, Randy!!
Sadly, he's lost more than just time in the water as he had to be reintroduced to each and every routine we did, as though he'd never done them before. His wife dropped him off for class and then came back to pick him up afterward. She was going to join in this fun but she had overslept and only been able to get him ready to go. At least Randy remembered the names of most of the "old-timers" and I am sure the routines will become just that as he gets back into it.
I was thinking about something today, some "Justinisms" from long ago. He is excited right now about the filming taking place of the next "Star Wars" movie. Many of the original actors are coming back, the props are the same, including the little motorcycle-looking jet bikes he used to imagine seeing in the woods as we drove to school. He confessed one day being obsessed with Star Wars. You think? I made a rule for him at one point, telling him that he could talk to me about Star Wars until we got to the Doctors Lake bridge and then he had to talk about something else until we got to school. The car was very quiet after the bridge, strangely enough, which might back his claim about being obsessed! This was before Timmy was born which would make him less than 9 years old at the time.
When he was younger yet, he would talk about what business he was going to be in when he grew up. At one time he had a whole litany about the hotel and restaurant he was going to have. That would be an entire blog of its own if I told that story. But, one particular dream of his was to have a stand on the side of the road by "Place Island", as he called it, where he would sell flowers to passersby. His first order of business would be to go to Sam's Club and buy a briefcase to carry the money home in, and, of course, a cash register!!
He was going to sell sunflowers, and charge people $1 for each one. His father told him that no one would pay that much for sunflowers, and Justin nobly informed him that at the end of the day, he'd bring any unsold ones home for his mama! I love that!! On Easter weekend, I bought a bouquet of sunflowers at Publix for the Easter tree in front of the church. Guess how much each of those flowers cost---yes, they were $1 each! Don't you just love it!? Those kind of memories NEVER get old!
