Days like These

When I was a child playing in the high heat of summer there would be these glorious days where Autumn would send a chill wind racing across the mountain to remind us that she was coming soon. These days would bring out all the old church women with their laundry and hymnals. They would hang clothes on the line while singing to the glory of God with voices that carried across the rolling hills and deep into the woods where my brother and I waged war against imaginary Nazis and whispered the worst insults we could imagine into the briar bushes so the blackberries would turn sooner. Then we would slip over to the little pond, deep in our woods, and fill up our water balloons.

We would leave the woods in-between the sprawling briar patches and crawl on our hands and knees through the high grass towards the house. Sometimes the Murderer would be stalking his way across the field and we would have to lay low in the grass listening to him pass, muttering to himself the whole way. Inexorably we would creep towards the road where we would begin to hurl our balloons high over the electrical wires to explode like an M80s on some unsuspecting driver's windshield and send them careening off into the distance where they would slam on their brakes and jump out the car screaming against god and man that such an indignity had been done. After we ran out of balloons it was time to head back home for more - where we would always be thrown into the tub, dressed, and tossed into the back of the car with a radio that always seemed to be warbling a lonesome tune about loss and the injustices of an uncaring world. 

I like thinking about days like this when I'm out in my parents' yard trimming the burning bushes and weeding their flower beds while my son and nieces race across the yard screaming at the horses and chase June Bugs. Listening to them play in the cool winds of Autumn on a sunny July day makes me smile. Then I get to come back inside and download the Basic Game and read my Feed while I wait on it to print.

"What the fuck is wrong with Wizards? Do they really thing we need to be told what a role-playing game is?"

Seriously internet? 

We're going to bitch about one of the big introduction points into the new edition being written for new players? What's next? Are you going to bitch that the sun is bright or that water is wet?