Finding Relaxtion in the Strangest Places...

I sat in a parking lot outside a strip mall yesterday. It was early evening, still sunny with a warm breeze blowing. I just returned something (one of my least favorite things to do) and I got into my car to drive home. When I opened the door, I didn’t want to close it, didn’t want to put the key in the ignition—didn’t want to go home. I inhaled the summer air (and car exhausts). I looked around at the asphalt with its mustard yellow painted lines and cars scattered about and chain stores with obnoxious clearance signs in the windows and wondered why there wasn’t a spinning rack with “Wish You Were Here” postcards or a display of “My Mom Went to a Parking Lot and All I Got Was This Lousy T-shirt”. It was so damn relaxing, I thought myself at that moment the most pathetic creature to ever walk the earth. I didn’t want to go home but wanted instead to stay there in that shopping plaza and breathe in whatever fresh air I could while averting my eyes from the shops and cars.

It was that day, desperately attempting to delay my inevitable arrival at home, that I decided to stop by the natural food store I’d been eyeing for months. Upon reaching the door, I realized it was locked despite the open sign and as I was walking away noticed, for the first time, the United States Armed Forces recruiting center one door down. I eyed the damn place like a teen drooling over a tattoo parlor, knowing I couldn’t really go in but hesitating outside the door just the same. My hub mocked me when I got home, saying I was too old and they wouldn’t take me but never saying he hadn’t, on occasion, thought of it himself.