Sometimes I want to just sit. And just think. No cellphone, no earbuds, no computer, no TV. Just sit on the porch and look around and enjoy the nice weather we’re finally getting. Kick back and, as Jefferson Airplane put it in their 1971 song, “Well, I thunk and I thunk…couldn’t think of anything better.”

The thing is, the more I think the more I realize what a junk drawer my mind really is. It’s full of stuff that I haven’t throw away because, you never know, I might need them sometime. Whereas the junk drawer at home is filled with things like a pencil with a worn-out eraser, some paper clips and rubber bands, a protractor, a few pennies, broken sunglasses I’ve been meaning to repair, six AA batteries, one D cell battery, Chapstick, scissors, tape measure,  obsolete Smith’s discount card, a Sharpie with a mushed-in point, and that stupid key that doesn’t fit any door, the junk drawer in my head is full of other useless things like the Three Stooges, whoopee cushions and “I sure could use a John Brooks glazed donut about now.”

When you’re not thinking of something specific, like solving a problem or making up a shopping list, you eventually get sidetracked and you never know what’s going to pop into your noggin.

I can go from “my, it’s a lovely afternoon” to “I need new brakes for the pickup” to “what was the name of that song I heard yesterday?” in a matter of nanoseconds. Trouble is if I’m not careful, this stream of consciousness thing can lead to me thinking about household finances and budgeting our money better and “do I really need a Keurig one-cup coffee maker?”

And if that’s not all, it then gets really weird, veering off into a litany of “what ifs.” Like “what if I won the Powerball lottery?” or “what if I had hit that deer last month crossing Highway 60?,” or “what if that Viet Cong guy had aimed his rocket just a tiny hair to the left?” (Shudder.)

That’s when “just thinking” balloons into over-thinking, with parenthetical qualifications, and by that time I’m ready to take Winnie the Pooh’s advice: “Did you ever stop to think, and then forget to start again?”

I’m not sure if the monsoon rains are done for the season, but if you’re one of those so-called sun worshippers, your day in the sun was yesterday, National Nude Day.

Not to seem too naïve, but I’m wondering how people celebrate National Nude Day. Although I try to be an open-minded kind of guy it sounds kind of icky, and I don’t know if there are any nudists in Socorro but there are a couple of things that first come to mind. For one, you’d spend a fortune on sunblock, and two, you’d have to be extra careful around cholla and goatheads.

As far as I could tell there was no one prancing around Socorro in their birthday suit but then again, if there were, they’d more than likely be observing the day parading behind closed curtains. Or at the nearest nudist camp, if there is such a thing around here.

Suffice to say, yesterday (for me) was National I’m Too Shy Day.

Some of us are old enough to remember the streaking craze in the 1970s, where certain “with-it” people thought it humorous to shed their clothes and run through a public place.

Some said they were making a political statement, but which emperor had no clothes?

I skipped that fad.

The only times I remember ever being naked in public were in those dreams when I’m somewhere and suddenly realize I’ve forgotten to put on my pants and I’ve got to get from place A to place B. And then somewhere along the line my pants have re-appeared. Am I alone on this? Wait. I know what you’re thinking, but this is not some Freudian thing like the fear of losing my pants, what psychiatrists call gymnophobia. I know this because it’s in the book The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud.

The two things I remember about that book are that places are often treated as persons and that dreams are never concerned with trivia.

After that, you’re on your own.

We’ve all had totally weirded-out dreams at one time or another and sometimes you just can’t help from trying to describe it to someone…like, “I was at work but it was really a bowling alley, and suddenly I was driving somewhere but I was on a bicycle, and I was talking with my brother, and my brother turned into my son, and… and…”

By that time you start sounding like Dorothy telling Auntie Em and Uncle Henry about munchkins, flying monkeys, and a scarecrow who talked.

 

John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain