BOHICA!
That was a term I became very familiar during my years of exposure to the Canoe & Seagull Club, also known as the United States Navy. I managed to avoid becoming a Squid (civilian term for sailors also known as Swab Jockeys, Rust Pickers, Anchor Clankers and various other terms I cannot repeat) by enlisting in the United States Air Force as soon as my draft notice arrived in the mailbox. However, growing up a Navy brat (both Mom and Dad were sailors, Dad a lifer) and later working for the Navy as a Civil Service employee you can’t help but pick up a few things. One I picked up was that word, actually an acronym standing for Bend Over Here It Comes Again!
This term was nearly always employed when one of those khaki clad idiots (officers) wandered near and caught the non-khaki idiots (enlisted men) lollygagging or goofing off in civilianspeak. I picked up a lot of other words, many at a very young age, but cannot repeat most of those, either. I’m still leery of Mom and getting my mouth washed out with one of those bars of US Navy issue soap that “followed my dad home from the base” every time I threw the old one away.
I took a look at the local weather radar a few minutes ago and the second thing that came to my mind was BOHICA! The first thing was an obscene reference to what the radar image is doing to my plans to mow the lawn. I haven’t mowed since we got back home from vacation, thanks to a similar weather situation every day since we returned. It has now been exactly 2 weeks since I last toured the grounds on the Dandelion Destroyer, spreading our proprietary formula lawn fertilizer which has it’s own acronym, DOGS. I tell people that stands for Direct Organic Gardening System but it actually refers to a special product that is the direct result of owning the best fed Labrador retriever in the county. That dog eats better than most of the people in the county!
The grass has been deeper before but is rapidly approaching record breaking status. It could have been worse. The last time I failed to mow for two solid weeks we almost lost Sam when he took off after some sort of critter and disappeared from sight in the foliage. I guess having him with us on vacation accounts for the unusually slow growth this time but we still have the greenest lawn on Pine Ridge.
Anyway, if anyone happens to have a few goats they would like to trade for a garden tractor I’ll sweeten the deal with a nearly new Toro self propelled mulching mower and a Shindaiwa weed whacker if you’ll agree to deliver the goats. Any interested parties should not delay in contacting me or you’ll also need to bring a metal detector to find the lawn equipment.
Now I’m off to mount the pontoons on my truck, get Sam into his snorkel and mask and shut this thing down before it gets fried by a lightning strike. I guess this will be another one of those old school evenings when I spend my time with a book. I sure am glad Dr. Seuss put a lot of pictures in his books or I’d have a terrible time following the plot in some of them!
