One summer, near the end of my waning youth, as September encroached, I woke up one hazy dead-aired morning with the urge to do something extraordinary, something unexpected, and something entirely out of character. By the time I had finished my Corn Flakes, I had decided I was going to join the navy.

It was a crazy moment and a crazy decision, but within weeks I had had a couple of interviews with a Recruitment Officer and I had the official enlistment forms. The forms sat on my table for days. I’m not terribly disciplined. I don’t take orders well. I don’t respond to authority. I don’t like being made to do things when I don’t understand why. And, while not altogether unfit, my body was not nearly a well-oiled machine. I was also not convinced that I didn’t get sea sick. See. Extraordinary, unexpected and very much out of character. Which seemed like a good enough reason to recommend it. But not quite.

I prefer to think now that I didn’t chicken out so much as come to my senses. But it was a very close call. I didn’t even tell people I was about to enlist because I didn’t want rational people to talk me out of it.

The end of another summer, just for the fun of it, I became a waiter in an upscale Italian restaurant. My reference was an Italian restaurant that had, sadly, burned to the ground. Of course I had never been a waiter before and my reference hadn’t so much burned to the ground as never existed in the first place. Still, I made out well enough.

Most people don’t really get to act of character but I still have urges to do something extraordinary, to step out of myself. I want to join the circus. I want to learn how to scuba dive and explore lost underground caverns. I want to enter a cycling marathon. I want to join a rugby team. I want to learn how to speak Mandarin. I want to teach myself the saxophone. I want to be a lawyer. I love the drama and the wordsmithing. I have a remarkable fondness for that movie, Catch Me if You Can. Where life is a buffet, I want to try everything. It’s anguish to know the lives I’m not going to live.

If I could, I would be a doctor, a lawyer, a rock star, a porn star, a stay-at-home mom, a cowboy, a high school custodian, a diplomat, a trapeze artist, a scam psychic, a hostage negotiator. But there just isn’t the time. We get one life.

Meanwhile life and summer pass. And we, at least in Western society, have been trained to expect change in September. September is the month of new starts. In years where September came and went without any significant changes, I was most disappointed and lost. What changes for Silas this September? Meanwhile, I anticipate change, without knowing what that change might be. Meanwhile, where a more motivated player might change stages, this hopeful chameleon lingers center-stage, waiting for the darkly dressed stage hands to change the set.

SS