The other day at the elementary school, we had like five flies get into the teachers lounge, and one of the other teachers wasn’t able to take care of them. So he gave the fly swatter to me, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply…the zen-calm came over me. When I opened my eyes, everything around me was moving in slow motion. With three swift swishes of my fly swatter, I sent three flies to insect nirvana, while the other flew out of one of the open windows. When I blinked again, things had gone back to normal speed (my zen mode doesn’t last so long these days). The teacher came up to me saying…subarashii (excellent). “Iie, iie, iie.” I responded, thinking that what I just did, wasn’t really anything special.
Now my father, that dude, was pretty freakin’ fast, I don’t how much of it he still has, but I remember when I was a kid, if there was a fly in the house, to dispose of it, my Dad would literally catch the fly with his bare hands and then throw it at the floor or against a wall. Yes, for you fly lovers, I’m really sorry, I know it sounds brutal, but let’s just focus on that first part. You have to have a good deal of speed to catch a fly with your hands. I’m not talking about just hitting the fly with your hand, as that wouldn’t be so different from a fly swatter, I mean grabbing it in a closed fist. That’s what’s so freakin’ strange to me. My Dad would catch them and they’d still be alive inside of his hand, before the coup de gras, anyway.
Geez, I’ve tried it, and I have yet to successfully pull it off. I must have gotten shorted on the athletic/speed genes. At this age, my father was both faster and stronger than I am now…ugh. I was hoping the whole recombination thing would give me a genetic advantage of some sort, but alas, I don’t know if I’ll ever be as fast as my old man was. I guess in this case maybe it had something to do with upbringing. Dad lived in the countryside, grandpa had chickens, and he was used to being outdoors and working with his hands, and there was plenty of room to run around. I always had more of a city upbringing. Of course I would rake the yard and things when I was supposed to, but I’m sure I did nowhere near the amount of outdoors work that my Paw did 
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Of course, my mind started doing the roundabout, and I started thinking how different my life would be right now if I were one of my parents. If I were my Dad, I’d be a soldier, with three children and a fourth on the way. I’d have a wife of nearly twelve years. Were I my mother, I would be pregnant with my fourth child (even though I secretly know the third of which was the cutest of the bunch…heh,heh,heh… “Take that! Nicky, Erica, and Derrick!” LOL) and be working as a teacher to help make ends meet. That’s crazy to me! In a sense, I think man, my parents were something else to be able to handle all of that. At that same time, I think, man, what the hell am I doing? I’m supposed to be an improvement on the previous generation. I still have my moments where living on my own gets a bit tough. Gee whiz…
How about you? How do you match up to your parents? Are you more/less athletic? More/less academic. What were their lives like in comparison to yours at that same age? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below
Thanks for reading,
Donald Ash
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