Not quite a native Ripley Countian - she attended only her last year of high school in Doniphan though she taught in the R-1 system for 32 years - Teresa (Pearson) Lee delights in surprising readers and herself with anecdotal observations of life in general. Maybe you can blame her St.Louis roots for a quirky humor and some slightly-askewed opinions, but never doubt she writes from the heart.

Dabbling

Posted Tuesday, August 8, 2023, at 10:03 PM

At the moment - roughly five days before this newspaper shows up in stores and mailboxes - we’re in the midst of a sticky summer heat…wave. I could say heat ‘snap’ and you’d know what I mean, but it’s an odd expression, just as ‘cold wave’ would be. But… we say cold snap and heat wave and saying it vice versa is unconventional, might raise eyebrows, so we don’t.

It’s uncomfortable outside. It’s not warm in my house and the air is moving, but it’s not as cold as the AC in my car, so that’s really where I’d prefer to be, in the car with the cold air blowing full-blast. The home AC can’t measure up to that, but here I sit because I don’t want to idle indefinitely in the car nor can I type going down the road. The talk-to-text gizmo doesn’t transcribe my spoken English well, so using it would create more work and take more time. And as of this writing, I’m still refusing to let any AI program do my writing. Wouldn’t that be letting AI do my thinking? It already works overtime to influence it. That’s bad enough.

So I’ll do what I do best when it’s so hot that my brain scrambles around erratically, making it unlikely I’ll be able to stick to one train of thought for a measly 300-word article. I’ll dabble. Dabbling almost guarantees profound thoughts will be absent, just as the completion of any task - indoors or outdoors - seems to be.

It’s so hot that I’m not satisfied scrolling through Facebook or clicking through channels on television. My attention is refusing to be grabbed. The dabbling I’d prefer is from that inviting gravel bar at Float Camp, but I’d be in the sun to do that dabbling, and it’s too much work to lug a chair and umbrella and cooler for that bit of dabbling in Current River. I’ve always ‘dangled’ my feet from a comfy spot, but the online Oxford dictionary says dabble works, too.

What I’m gonna do is read…from a genuine book…and dangle my feet from a comfy chair that I’ve moved adjacent to my favorite floor vent, tall glass of tea handy. That’s my plan. What’s yours?

(For the August 2, 2023 issue)