Monday, October 12, 2020

Paying the Farm Bill

Today I remembered that I had a bill due for the UNC Faculty Club, so figured I had better go and pay it before I forgot about it. Often a good practice. Alongside the quarterly dues there was a bill for $20 even. "What's that?" I wondered. It was for visits to the snack bar over the summer.

Ahh yes, the snack bar, for those few occasions when Graham and I went down there for a swim and got dinner there. For him, a hot dog, for me, a burger, along with shared fries and, if they were available, some green beans. On a couple of occasions there was a guy there practicing his dives. Not a young guy, maybe a few years older than me, but a good diver, probably he had done it competitively when he was younger. And he did a series of reps of some basic dives, pikes, reverses, flips, that got more challenging as he went but never got very flamboyant. He was just working on technique. We observed and discussed.

After dinner we would head off into the evening to get some hours of night driving for Graham to fulfill the requirements of his driver's license. We would talk about this and that, coronavirus numbers, or maybe the place just west of Pittsboro on 64 where there was a Black Lives Matter billboard right next to a Confederate flag. Not by accident, mind you. And then we'd go home.

All this came back to me when I saw the snack bar bill. I wish we had gone more often. Though then I would have been away from Natalie even more.

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