Easy Essays Resurrected

By LeRoy Chatfield

Oh my!  How do I begin this Easy Essay and why write it?

Good questions, both of them.

 I have an answer  but it will take  juggling a few  seemingly unrelated  topics to find it.  Please bear with me.

One of the curses of old age is having to get up in the middle of the night to “go to  the bathroom.” If it were just one time, I wouldn’t call it a curse, but when it’s two times it’s getting pretty close, but God forbid,  when it is three or four times a night,  that IS a curse, and I don’t care what my doctor told me: “well, given your age, that sounds statistically correct.”  

What kind of old-age sympathy is that?

 Three times!  Four times!  I am not even  counting the bathroom visit just prior to going to bed, or the visit immediately after getting up in the morning.   

I count my blessings if it is only two times in the middle of the night, but truthfully for these past eight months or so I haven’t  received  enough blessings to count.

Invariably, after I return from the bathroom visit to resume  my night’s sleep, I open my iPhone and  check to see  if I have any messages or emails or perhaps there will be a  breaking news story I would be interested in reading.

Finally, I check the final scores for the Oakland A’s and the Sacramento  Kings.

For the life of me, I cannot explain why  at my advanced age a winning score pleases me or a losing score disappoints. It must be some  kind of subliminal carryover from my childhood love of sports. 

But now to answer the question – why am I writing this Easy Essay?

Two nights ago, after I returned from the bathroom and opened my iPhone, there was a long email message from a former colleague I worked with more than 45- years ago in the Farmworker Movement in California.

Out of the blue, just like that!  He wrote to tell me how much he enjoyed reading the Easy Essays I had published in my  Syndic Literary Journal and urged me to write more of them. He thought it was important enough to write and tell me this!   He hoped I would continue to write and publish my essays.  

In the middle of the night, I began thinking about what he told me. 

It’s true, I have not written much recently but I attributed it to the fact the Pandemic had turned my world upside down and I really didn’t feel much like writing anything, let alone Easy Essays. 

So there you have it!  Thanks to this unexpected email coming during my visit to the bathroom in the middle of the night urging me to write more Easy Essays . . . this will be the first one since my Covid vaccination.

I have now resolved to write 11 more Easy Essays and publish  them in Syndic during the Fall of 2021.

Thanks, Richard, I needed that!