I�m lying on the floor of my bedroom in front of the door listening to the cicadas humming in the trees outside. I spent the last half an hour heaving thistle plants out of the ground of the traffic island across the street from our house. I am tired of looking at the weeds and have decided to take it on myself to clean the space up. But I am scratched and thorny now with a sun-induced headache and have come inside to cool off and rehydrate before I go back to figure out how to haul forty pounds of thistles out of the middle of the road.

It has been an uneventful day. I have accomplished little beyond teaching water aerobics and shuttling AJ to and fro. AJ and I went to a screening of Disney�s The Sword and the Stone at our local library this morning. I haven�t seen the film in years and had forgotten how much I enjoyed it. The sole male librarian was running today�s film. He smiled when we came in (late), signed us in, and returned to his book � Howard Zinn�s A People�s History of the United States.

The film was sparsely attended � about ten remarkably well-behaved children and parents. They laughed at every slapstick moment. Nothing beats a laugh-track by silly preschoolers. AJ had been waiting for the moment where Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone and gasped audibly when the moment finally occurred. We�d talked about the legend of King Arthur in advance and something about the story captured his imagination, as is evidenced by his regular retelling of the story. But even more fascinating than the story itself was the notion of legend � something that is partly true and partly not. Since we first talked about Arthur, he�s been fixated on determining whether all stories are true or not true. He is intent on separating his fact from his fiction.

Perhaps I should send him to Washington.

0 people said it like they meant it