Detritus

There are any number of things that fell by the wayside when I morphed into what passes for an adult. A small sample:

• I used to consider a steady diet of television (the four major food groups: ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS) my birthright as an American.
  
• I used to believe that the thought actually counts.
  
• I once considered any bottle of wine worth opening when it bore a sketch of a chateau/manor, and a British or French brand name.
  
• I once had a taste for pastels and Rococco. (Mom hasn't yet realized that I've outgrown this. For her sake, pretty-please don't rat me out.)
• For some time, my most cherished wish was to be able to fly under my own power.
• When I was young, I could actually eat Velveeta cheese straight-up.
• Once, I believed that my mother was right about bad people being bad because they didn't feel loved.
  

And I used to like holidays. Really I did. July 4th was one of the better ones, actually. Sitting on the bank of the river, wanting--despite being old enough to know better--to catch one bright petal of those flowers of light--and to have it stay lit forever. Now all the holiday means to me is two weeks of white trash neighbors failing to amputate parts with firecrackers. And being annoyed with the VFW types who tend to monopolize the day. (You folks have your own friggin' holiday. And I take that one QUITE seriously, thank you very much.) And, in general, just not being able to shake the feeling of living in a decaying empire. Not necessarily "decaying" as in the fall of Rome. More like 18th Century Venice: All Carnivale and courtesans before Napoleon's thugs rolled in. Yes, a Venice analogy will do well enough, I think.

And so the Fourth joined the churchyard clique of standard-issue holidays that I've learned to dread (and often despise) for their empty, tchotchke-spangled mummeries.

A few of the B-list festival days have survived, though, and are now well-tended as part of a careful cross-breeding program with the few private holidays eked out of the workaday calendar. Enough of a menagerie, I think, for the erstatz grown-up who still likes peanut butter and fast carnival rides and Dr. Seuss and dollhouses and the heady perfume of a freshly-opened box of crayons and...