Photo by Suzy Hazelwood from Pexels
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, does not understand how it is that the keeper and his ilk cling to life-long habits of measuring a day in terms of accomplishment, even when they have advanced to an age when they don’t really have to do a damn thing except nap.
On a recent evening, the keeper was mulling over his unproductive day, and reviewing how on past similar days he would have helped with the hay-harvest, or fixed a leaky roof, or built an addition onto the house, any of which would have given him the kind of sleep-inducing personal satisfaction he obviously needed.
It had been a good day—the keeper and Phyllis joining her son Todd and granddaughter Alexis for a leisurely late dinner, and earlier having at a couple of crossword puzzles; but there was nothing genuinely productive about the day for the keeper to get his “accomplishment” teeth into.
Then he remembered that at some point before lunch he had searched out needle and thread and sewed a button on an old shirt that had been hanging useless in his closet for a number of years.
It was enough to give him such a sense of accomplishment that he went almost immediately to sleep, proving perhaps that at certain stages in life, building a house or overhauling a truck is comparable to sewing on a shirt button.
