Primitive conditions can lead to historical masterpieces

I guess when King Tut’s buddies were trying to chisel out a few complete sentences on the walls of that pyramid back in the day, they would have been really irritated to have left their last blade on the barge. Likewise, the guys scratching out the Mayflower Compact would have had problems if they had left their quills back in Portsmouth. What if the founding Fathers had forgotten to order the parchment? Great pieces of literature require forethought … planning … someone to remind the writer that he should not leave their laptop at the house when they are going on a week long vacation with the grandkids. 

It will come as no surprise to those who know me well that I am sometimes a little scattered. During the past several weeks I’ve been jet-setting around Texas meeting responsibilities right and left. I’ve attended a very important birthday party at which 22 four-year-olds laid waste to a large cake, broke the sound barrier in the suburbs of Austin, and made my grandsons a very happy camper. 

A quick trip home to repack, and I was off to the city for the school I mentioned in last week’s column. That time, I remembered to take along the laptop so that column could be sent in. 

Next stop: pick up the granddaughters and head for the Hill Country to spend a week at grandparents camp. I had everything I needed: flashlight, swimsuit, Bible, camp registration papers. The “camp suitcase” had made the rounds to birthday and tax school and back. Everything was going fine until I realized I needed enough medication to get me through five more days than what remained in my pill boxes. I had to make a detour back to my house where my planning continued to go downhill. 

Of course I removed my tax school bag from the car. I removed the dirty clothes. I removed my good shoes and that bag with the laptop. I was going to camp. No more work, except for that Pulitzer Prize-winning column I needed to write sometime between the ropes course and the Bible study in the outdoor chapel. 

So here I sit in the bathroom of our shared room, trying to keep from waking the girls and typing out my column using my thumbs on the small keyboard of my cell phone. 

How do those politicians who tweet in the middle of the night ever get the spelling right?