Bumper Crop

North Carolina just had more of our COVID-19 restrictions relaxed this week, and Clint and I were lucky enough to get our first round of vaccinations as well. It feels like the world is ever-so-slightly beginning to open up again, doesn't it? While we still can't show our faces in public or shake hands or even think about things like (gasp!) a salad bar, there is a light at the end of this tunnel, and it feels awfully good. 

Do you know what a bumper crop is? (The first one of y'all to say that I am familiar with bumper crops because my alma mater is an agricultural college where we all wear orange overalls and ride tractors barefoot will incur my wrath, so cut it out. I'm getting ready to make an analogy here.) A bumper crop is a crop that produces an usually large harvest. I got to thinking that all this time we have been spending shut in, at home and socially distanced and what not is kind of like a time of sowing, and man, I can't wait for the bumper crop we are going to reap. 

I've already referenced my alma mater, so let me just start by saying that it is my hope and my dream that college football--and by football, I of course mean tailgating in all its crowded glory--returns in the fall. Clemson has announced that as of now, it intends to allow 100% capacity in the stadium for the upcoming season, and while I have never been one to take those spectacular Saturdays for granted, I will have a special appreciation for them this year. I want to go early, stay late, feel the excitement from the crowd, and cheer until I lose my voice (again, these are not new things, just things I have missed doing and will be giddy upon which to return). I will not even complain when I arrive at my seat to find that, again this season, my seatmate is a 300-pound hyper sweaty gentleman who, to borrow a phrase from Buddy the elf, smells like beef and cheese. I am simply going to bask in the glory of being there to enjoy it all, in person, in all its glory. What a bumper crop that first game back is going to be after a year of missing out. Talk about a harvest.

Better days are coming. They are called game days.

I also want to go to a concert--any concert--and I won't even care if the artist plays only songs off his new album that I've never heard before. Not this time. I'll move my mouth and pretend to sing along and just be happy to be out in the world, listening to live music. Play anything you like and let me and 18,000 of my friends belt it out like never before. We will dance in the aisles and scream for encores and buy souvenir t-shirts when we finally shuffle out to our cars at the end of the night. And every time we hear those songs play, we will think about the night we were finally free again to go out and hear music and how it sounded better than it had sounded in a long time, because concerts are a bumper crop.

 

Here we are at a Dave Matthews Band concert in 2013. It poured down rain, he started two hours late, and barely played any recognizable songs at all. What I wouldn't give to go back. 

I have missed the movies. Not streaming movies at home, because I think we have seen all the movies possible to watch from our couch, but going to an actual movie theater with stadium seating and surround sound and all that. I can't wait to spend $38 on a small popcorn the size of a bushel basket and a medium Diet Coke that is really a two-liter bottle with a lid and straw attached, and head into a crowded theater again. I will watch too many previews that are way too loud and finish my popcorn before the mediocre movie ever starts and I will love every single second of it, even when someone's cell phone inevitably rings during the most inopportune time. I will revel in the sticky floor and the scent of that golden liquid popcorn butter with nine billion calories, and my seat which is always the one with the broken spring. What a bumper crop that will be.

Remember this? Oh, how good it's going to feel to be back again.

It has been over a year since our church held in-person worship, and oh, how I have missed it. I promise to never take it for granted again. As convenient as it is sit in my living room and watch the service on the laptop computer, I like going to the actual church. When the world goes back to normal and I get to go back, I will gladly wear shoes that pinch my feet and and Spanx up to my arm pits and sing hymns as loudly as I can manage and not look at my watch or squirm in my seat (much). When we greet one another, I might use a phrase my grandmother used to say and be so darn happy to be among people again that I tell them, "Come here and let me hug your neck." And I'll do it. Sunday church and hugging necks is a bumper crop.

When we finally get to rid ourselves of our masks, I am going to wear a bright, bold lipstick and lot of lip gloss because there will be no mask to smudge it all. I will don big, dangly earrings which won't get caught in my mask's ear loops and my hair won't get smooshed so it will be big and unencumbered and free. Okay, maybe this part of my wish list belongs more in a post entitled "Flashy Floozy" than "Bumper Crop," but it sure will feel good to look good again. In case you couldn't tell, I'm ready.

We're so close, friends. We have been through an ordeal, and we deserve all the good things that are coming our way. Hopefully, we are getting ready to end this tedious season of worry and uncertainty and enter a time to gather and celebrate and enjoy. The momentous things we loved and missed will seem even bigger and the little things won't be taken for granted any more. Our harvest is about to arrive, and I just know it's going to be a well-deserved bumper crop. I wish you an abundance of naked-face enjoyment and shoulder-to-shoulder moments of blissful, everyday normalcy.