Margo Oxendine

When I was young — and it seems oh, so long ago — my father constantly admonished me: “Stop lolling around!”

Ah, lolling around. It is something I’ve always done quite well. I would loll around in my room and read; I much preferred it to “going outside,” where I was expected to do something like weed the garden.

I detested weeding the garden. Still do, in fact. The basic reason was, I would get dirty. I always hated getting dirty. I never minded the garden at first. I was too young to weed, and I did like the yellow squash that grew there. And I hated the peppers. These days, I tell waiters that I’m allergic to them. They probably know better.

I well remember the day I came to hate the garden. I was fond of watching a cute little groundhog rustle and root around in there. And then, Daddy took the rifle from the basement and shot him. Oh, it was a very sad day. Since then, I never liked the garden.

(There’s really no reason for me to have a garden. Friends and acquaintances have gardens, and bags of produce show up unbidden on my doorknob throughout the summer.)

But back to lolling around. I was fond of lolling around my room pretending I was a singing star. The hairbrush made a perfect microphone. I would dress up in costumes from a trunk we got from one of my cousins, who was lucky enough to take dancing lessons. Oh, how I yearned for dancing lessons. That was out of the question because a) “They’re too expensive,” and b) the nearest dance studio was in Covington — a vast 20 miles distant.

So I would watch TV very carefully, and then teach myself dance steps. Then, I’d put on one of the costumes and grab the hairbrush and sing and dance my way to imagined fame. I don’t know why my parents called that “lolling around.” I was entertaining myself, and certainly “staying out of trouble.” Truth be told, there was no trouble to get into in Hot Springs in those days. The “trouble” opportunities are still quite slim.

In college, I would loll around in my dorm room working hard not to study. I majored in theater, though, so there were plenty of opportunities to dress up in costumes and sing and dance. How lucky was that?

When I moved to Key West, lolling around was something we all did. Key West is the capital of lolling around. My job involved going out to sea, where we’d loll around on a boat and “work” by diving into the turquoise Gulf of Mexico and looking for bright, shiny things like Spanish treasure.

There was certainly no lolling to be done in San Francisco. Rush, run, hurry, focus, fight for a taxi. That about sums it up. I was finally getting paid to write, though, and the writing profession lends itself to a lot of lolling around. We call it “thinking.”

I seemed to be busy, busy, busy in California, and even after I moved back to Virginia. People in their 30s, 40s and 50s must be very focused on making a living. There is little time for lolling.

Now, I spend a heck of a lot of my day lolling around “thinking” about what to write. It’s the thinking that’s the hard part. Once the thought finally leaps to mind, I am trained to bang it out on the page and be done with it. Don’t tell anyone, but even though it may take days or weeks to come up with a column idea, it only takes about 20 minutes to write it.

I have found that lately, I do not really like to take a vacation away. This was always one of my favorite things; I looked forward to vacation holidays, and I squeezed every experience I could out of them. Now, every “getaway” seems fraught with hassles and disappointments. I find vacation travel grueling. I can’t wait to get home and loll around.

When I told the esteemed editor of this mag that instead of getting away, I’d be lolling around on Labor Day, he said he was doing the same. He dubbed it a “Lolliday.” Perfect!  

To order Margo Oxendine’s A Party of One, email [email protected], or call 540-468-2147 Monday-Thursday from 9-5.