A Monday again. They come around too often and only a few people like to see them. Today was also a holiday so like I mentioned last night, the commute was easy, not crowded at all. Most of the office was out, they were working from home, though the day they were allowed to work from home was Fridays.

I don’t know the nitty gritty since I don’t have the opportunity to work from home, my job involves physical things like paper and mail.

On the train home, I saw an ad that said ‘Success’. Every time I have to spell success I remember the first time I learned how. Growing up in my neighborhood it seemed there were more girls than boys so my earliest friends were girls.

I am thinking of Donna Augusto. Donna was a year or two older than me, and her family and mine were good friends. Donna was the youngest of four girls and I was the youngest of two boys and a girl. Boy, girl, boy & me.

I remember playing ‘Talk show’ with Donna sitting in snowbanks and chatting in the winter. I played Mike Douglas and Donna was chunky at the time so she was Totie Fields. In the fall we played ‘school’ in Donna’s backyard.

Donna used to be friends with Eileen Grant who lived down the street and were also friends with my family. Eileen used to playfully beat me up in the Augusto’s front yard and would throw me into their bushes much to the ire of Mr Augusto.

Donna graduated from St. Francis and went to Lodi High School and one of the last times I hung out with her, or rather, around her was when she wanted to be a cheerleader. I remember two cheers she memorized with the movements, one was based on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s ‘Paul Revere’s Ride’- “Listen my children and you will hear”.

The other was “S-U-C-C-E-S-S / That’s the way we spell success…” So every time I spell success that is what goes through my mind. Having written that down and put it out there, I wonder if that will continue to run through my head. D

onna grew up and moved away and got married. I never had any contact with her again, though I am friends with her eldest sister Lorraine on the social medias. Lorraine was the brains of the four sisters and sometimes when I post something that might be risque I worry about offending her. Offending a woman that I hadn’t seen in person for almost 50 years. But that’s the respect I have for Lorraine.

It’s a chilly Monday night in October. I don’t like it much but there’s nothing I can do about it. I still wonder why these people are so excited about Autumn. I almost wrote ‘The Fall’ but I will equate the Fall with Mark E. Smith.

And the Fall are no more since Mark E. Smith passed away in 2018. One of these days I will write about my experiences with the Fall. All true and somewhat entertaining. Those 20th century days…