Kokomo

I was in the car going somewhere the other day when The Beach Boys song, "Kokomo" came on the radio.   My mind went back to a memory of college, some thirty years ago when the song was popular.   Wait, has it been thirty years since I was in college?  Okay, that's a sobering thought.  So it would appear the song is thirty years on at this point as well.   With that number of years gone by I think can officially say, "back in the day," right?

Back in the day, when I was a Freshman in college, the song "Kokomo" by the Beach Boys was in full swing popularity.   One day while my roommate and I were likely not studying, doing homework or anything else remotely academic, her mother called.   The local radio station where she lived had had a contest.  Remember when you had to call in, trying to be the first or fifth or hundredth caller to win something?   Well, her mother had won.

There were ten winners, each of whom could invite twenty people, to go on a day trip to Jamaica.  Specifically Montego Bay, which is one of the words in that Beach Boys song.   My roommate's mother wanted her to come (as well as her hairdresser).   Only my roommate didn't have a car, and we were hours away.   But I had a car.

A that's how I got to be one of the twenty people in her mother's group.   The whole trip was entirely comped by all the businesses involved, trading advertising time for services.   We'd fly down to Jamaica early in the morning on Saturday and come back late that night.   It was indeed a day trip—and only two days away, which meant we had to get on the road the very next evening to get to her brother's house, get three hours of sleep and then board a plane full of winners from the radio station.

I'd never been anywhere tropical.  I'd never been to an all-inclusive resort like Sandals before.   And I'd never been old enough to drink alcohol anywhere.   I was only nineteen-years-old at the time.  We did everything, looked at everything, went shopping in the downtown market.  We went into every pool and lounged on the beach.   We also swam up to the bar...in the pool, a decadence we had never even known existed.   As the sun was setting, we got back on the plane and then drove back several hours to our dorm room.

It was only a day trip, but we were in the lap of luxury for the entire day, living life like the rich and famous.   And ever since, whenever I hear the song "Kokomo" I flashback to that day in Montego Bay when I was nineteen.

The Big Bot Update:  My husband and son played basketball tonight.  They haven't done this in a long, long time.   If we can get my son interested in playing, I think he'll get his friends in the houses around ours playing too.   Competitive sports they can do outside that he would prefer doing over screens would be a good thing.  Hopefully, they'll start playing together more.  My husband wanted to get the basketball hoop when my son was less than a year and clearly couldn't play.   It factored into "ball" as my son's first word though.  He watched his father play a lot when he was tiny.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles: We've had a bit of a fright with the pressure in my daughter's eye.   If the valve is functioning correctly, it should begin to drain when pressure is at nine or higher.  So yesterday when we had a morning reading of nineteen, my husband and I got concerned.  There is a chance we'll have to add pressure reducing drops back if the valve can't keep up with fluid production.   And that would be for life most likely.   And that's not good.   We decided to take an evening reading, and it came in at nine.  Okay, whew, an anomaly.   But this morning we got a measurement of twenty-one, which is higher than the valve should allow.   But again tonight, the pressure was back to eight.   So maybe there is some variance in how the valve lets fluid out overnight or while she's prone or some other factor we don't yet understand.  Thankfully, her pressure isn't continuing to rise, and it's dropping back down to the normal range.  When we have a non-school day, we'll have to take some readings a few hours after she's been up and moving around to see how long it takes to lower from the overnight high.