I absolutely love early spring. It's the time of year when you can wear sweatshirts and shorts outside in the evening. You get an occasional thunderstorm. The grass turns green. The calves and lambs start running across the hills in the sunshine. You leave the windows open on the house to let the winter must and dust clear out.
Driving home last night, I smacked my first windshield bug, and thought, "Aw, peas. That awesome two-week window between Winter and Bugs is over already." And that realization instantly brought to mind a time long ago when I got grounded for not recognizing the power of those bug-free two weeks. Here goes.
One Friday night, my sister and I took the 'stang out on the usual cruising route around town. Nothing was happening, so we decided to go to a neighboring town, 10 miles away. Not a big distance, but we weren't really supposed to go there without notifying the parentals. We did it anyway. Whee! Subterfuge! Flash forward to later that night, when we pulled in the driveway, crept into the house, and sank into our beds with our smug cleverness.
But we were awakened in the morning by even smugger clevererness. Mom. Says she, "Did you girls have fun last night?" Yep. "What'd you do?" Oh, we just messed around town. "Really?" Yep. "You didn't go anywhere else?" Uh, no ... "Because I think you went to the City of G." Crap. Busted. "Yep. Grounded."
HOW DID SHE KNOW?!?! DANG! I mean, we knew our mom was terrifyingly intuitive. But we didn't know that she was Sherlock-flippin-Holmes. The woman had gone out to do the chores, and determined that the squished-bug population on our car hood/windshield was so high that it could only have come from driving the round trip to the City of G. I also think she had the local CSI come and analyze the angle of the squishes to verify that we had indeed been going highway speeds when the bugs met their demise.
Ah, that two-week window in between Winter and Spring. Two very special weeks without bug spray ... and without boundaries.
