Birthdays and Summertime

When I started this blog "caliboyinbrooklyn" meant a very specific thing. Living in New York City, sporadically employed, and under the table at that, I had "conversations with the ether." Still smoking cigarettes and with a healthy drinking hobby, I roamed around looking for the seedy underside of the Ultimate Urban.

Now, over a dozen years later, two major moves later, a career change or two along the way, and now two kids later, I'm spending my summer trying to survive the time off with my five year old.

Up until yesterday, that line was just a joke about two dudes---one a guy who's life experiences push him to imagine revolution type of social change, and the other a guy who's entire life experiences have led him to the same thing, but he's only five years old. He's a copy of me, but fully formed.

But Saturday, at the birthday party of one of my son's friends, saw us, as a four-top family, get bashed by the falling trunk-sized branch of a carob tree.

This is from a while after, once the paramedics and police arrived. You like to think of yourself as moving like the Flash, being able to dodge falling branches and save your family.

When in reality, your brain can't get your legs to move quick enough and soon you'll be brained and horizontal, scrambling to see if your wife and kids are bloodied.

A lady and her daughter were pinned under the bulk of one side of the branch, and they were rushed off to the hospital. 

Here's a link to an article on the subject.

We're all mostly okay.

But the summer trawls along...