Otis Redding Would Be Proud

I spent Sunday, June 21, 2009, doing absolutely nothing. Nothing really productive at all. I went grocery shopping with my mom early in the morning, but past that, I did nothing, and what a fantastic day it was.

I’m a teenager on summer break, so doing nothing is familiar territory to me. But, I hadn’t really done nothing while doing something.

Allow me to explain. June 21 was Father’s Day (I’m saying this so that people in the future who are reading this will know the circumstances), and my grandmother called because she was having some get together and wanted my mother and me to come. Neither of us wanted to go, and I texted my cousin to see if she was going. She said that she was meeting her parents, my aunt and uncle, who were at an RV camp at this place called Rio Vista which is like 40 minutes away and is right by a river and such and she invited me along.

My cousin is about six years older then me, and I like spending time with her; we have a lot of things in common. So, she picks me up and off we go.

Forty minutes later we arrive at this RV camp and it’s a pretty nice place; it’s got a mini golf thingy and a pool (despite the fact that there’s a river about 500 feet away).

We get to this place at about 1:15. There’s me, my cousin, my aunt and uncle, and my aunt’s sister, whom I’m meeting for the first time (she lives in VA). This particular aunt married into the family and so in some way I’m related to her sister. Her sister is about mid-forty’s to fifty, and my aunt is in the same age range, obviously same with my uncle.

So we get there, and all of us are sort of talking but after about twenty, thirty minutes, we’re just sitting and relaxing. Shooting the breeze. This is bliss.

We start up a game of Yahtzee, and we play a few games of that. It was me, my cousin, and my aunt playing against each other. It was so much fun because we were playing competitively but not overtly so. And we’re just joking and having a good time.

After Yahtzee gets old I suggest cards, and my uncle retorts with dominoes which I’ve never played, so I thought what the hell.

So we (me, my cousin, and my uncle) play dominoes for awhile, maybe an hour. I ended up losing by ten point’s total, which normally would have pissed me off, but it barely affected me. Sunday just wasn’t a day to be mad at anything.

A few minutes into the game of dominoes we hear some sirens like they’re driving on the road, and then they’re gone, and we all figured that they had just driven by.

Well, my aunt points out that she sees a fire truck on the road about ten minutes after we hear the sirens. We’re in the way back of the RV camp, as far back as it goes. We’re about 750 feet from the road, but there are a bunch of trees blocking our view. This doesn’t really affect us, and we consider walking over there and quenching our curiosity (good phrase eh?) but the game of dominoes is too riveting to ignore.

So about half way through the game, we hear the familiar sound of a helicopter, and it sounds awfully lower then one you would normally hear.

We look up and see that it’s one of those medical helicopters. Not a good sign for whoever needs it. If you need one of those helicopters, your ass is probably f’ed up. This helicopter actually lands on the road (the road is right next to the river).

My uncle and I decide that this is too much excitement to ignore and we need to go check it out. My cousin decides to stay behind.

As someone who is a big plane/helicopter nerd, I’m pretty excited about this. I’ve flown on an airplane plenty of times, but I’ve never had the pleasure of even seeing a helicopter unless it’s flying in the air.

We sauntered (good word eh? I’m on fire!) over to the road where there were a lot of people who were looking at the accident. I won’t go into details about what happened to the guy, but he’ll be okay from what we heard (my uncle asked a sheriff and he told us what happened, but said he’ll probably be okay).

And this might sound morbid, but it kind of fit the mood. It was just the sort of thing you’d do on a day like that; watch an accident.

After that we went back to the game of dominoes, I lost, and then we just relaxed. We had a cord where you could attach your iPod hooked up to the radio and so I was blasting my tunes. I played the Beatles for awhile, but not everyone is the fanatic like I am, so I flipped around before eventually settling on some Rolling Stones which is fantastic music for sitting in an RV park and relaxing to.

My uncle cooked some burgers on the grill and they were great. Very juicy. Life was just good that day. Not a care in the world, laughing with family, enjoying being lazy. I reiterate my phrase at the top of this blog—I did nothing while doing something, and that was…glorious.

What I’m listening to: Pet Sounds – The Beach Boys (specifically: Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Don’t Talk (Head On My Shoulder), Let’s Go Away for Awhile, and God Only Knows)