I have a favorite spot on the college campus where I punch-in my 8 to 5.  It’s a 1 foot x 1.5 foot patch of treaded cement sidewalk with a word ruggedly scratched into it.  It catches my eye in the morning as I tote my banana and morning decaf vanilla latte towards my desk, and in the evening, as I roll my shoulders and wrists and stretch my back after another long day at the clickidy-clack.
The word is “Fartz.” F-A-R-T-Z.

It is my favorite spot, because it leaves my mind with so many questions:

  • Who wrote this?
  • When did they write it?
  • How did they write it?  With what?
  • Was the cement still wet?
  • Why, of all the things you can write, did they write “Fartz”?
  • Why, “Fartz” with a “z”?

I will probably never find the answers to my questions.  Plus, the day is probably eminent where the maintenance staff will bust out the orange cones and a dusty bag of concrete.  They’ll drag the green hose over, mix the thick grey mess in a beat-up Home Depot orange bucket, and “Fartz” will disappear, hiding forevermore beneath a new, contrasting darker sidewalk.

I’ll always remember it, though.

There’s something about favorite spots.  What comes to mind when you’re asked, “What are you most favorite spots in the world?” If you are privileged enough to have traveled a little – for pleasure – it might be an exotic answer.

I was fortunate enough to spend my honeymoon in Jamaica, and one of my most favorite spots in the world is the second story deck with a canopy that guarded me from the sun, let in the cool breeze, and looked out over nothing but ocean.  Maybe it was because we were so young and unexperienced at life that we had few worries and were able to completely collapse into the moment where the only sounds were the wind and the waves.  Maybe it was because we were children of the 70s and 80s, and weren’t trained (yet) to be symbiotic to our digital devices.  Whatever it was, it made the moment damn near perfect, and sometimes when I’m having a really rough time, I think about that moment and that place that actually existed once on this earth, and hope for another moment like that again.

What is your favorite spot?