Pulling on a Cat's Tail

I love the sound of bag pipes. I like the sound of drums-any kind of drum, bass drums, bongos, Native American drums, USC marching band playing with Fleetwood Mac, just about any marching band, really. Put those two sounds together and I'm marching off to war.

We had a "Cultural Awareness Assembly" at our school yesterday. It was one of those assemblies where student get up on stage and dance, sing, do something from their culture. We are an international school, something like thirty-seven languages are spoken by our students from all over the world, pretty cool. Of course, as I get older, I draw closer to my own ancestry-the Scots. These students don't necessarily need to see another white guy in a dress but I give them a pretty good accent when we're talking about Shakespeare and my theory that he was drunk most of the time, a prime reason why you can't understand half the crap he wrote. London water, terrible in 1604.

So I'm sitting there watching the tribal dancers and eventually, the Hula dancers arrived. Who the hell on our campus is from 'Hula,' I thought to myself. Most of the kids I saw dancing, from the back row I was sitting in, looked like Hispanic kids. Of course, if you put a Hispanic kid next to Polynesian kid, baggy their pants, turn their hats on backwards, and have them say "Wazup?" they would be identical. If they can have suspect Hula dancers, why can't they have the Scots!

I'm sitting there imagining a pipe and drum core marching in and then up the aisle to the stage. Kids would follow them automatically because they couldn't help it. That's just what they did at the Battle of Sterling!! Wait, I think we lost that one, anyway-why can't we?

So, as the sun starts to crack the horizon on another snow-less Phoenix landscape, the beasts are sleeping at my feet, the coffee is oh, so good, and The Royal Dragoon Guards play on the CD, I think today, later after the sun dries the lawn, I will proceed to the yard where I will mow the bonny glen to an even layer to the melodic sound of someone jerking on a cat's tail. Aye, tis a good day for a fight!