Remember(ing) Laughter

When my dad turned 50 years old, he did a little 'river dance' on his birthday cake.  Sadly frustrated with life and years behind him to that point, and whatever present hassles he felt his family, (empty) wallet and failing business had been giving him, in a single swooping motion, he swatted his 50th birthday cake off the kitchen counter, and leapt upon it like Nureyev.

Stamping like a person one-tenth his age in the frosting, and crushing "5" and "0" candles beneath his still shoe-clad feet, he ceased misbehaving only when my mom burst, literally, Lucille Ball-like into tears.

I was not privvy to the "Event of the Half Century", as my brother and I came to call that day; I did not witness it myself ... My brother, in these sort of excited, hushed tones, related what was going on, as I entertained guests in the upstairs bedroom we shared:  a sanctuary (whenever I'd lock Jared out of it) that I used to kick back and call, "The Swamp".

Finest Kind

My friend Mike and I had been arguing that day over which of us was going to be Hawkeye Pierce ... and more importantly, which one of us was going to go downstairs and eat birthday cake wearing the dirty bathrobe my brother and I had laying around the floor of our bedroom?

I was adamant:  I was going to be wearing that bathrobe, because Hawkeye would have ... and anyway, it was on my bedroom floor, in my house, not Mike's!

"You're Trapper John!  You're TRAPPER!" I screamed into Mike's sweaty armpit ... as he tightened his headlock and gave me a noogie.

Just then, my brother (Major Winchester) burst in.  "Dad smashed his birthday cake on the floor!"

I didn't hear what he said at first -- flailing, in a headlock, as I was -- but eventually, as the words sank in -- and as my best friend Mike released his grip -- I realized that neither of us would be needing the bathrobe ...

There wasn't any birthday cake to be eaten!

"Jared, are you joking?" I asked my brother.

He responded by throwing me into a headlock ... I told him I believed him!  I just wanted to make sure!

He gave me a noogie.  Then we ran downstairs.

Sure enough, my mom was wailing like Lucy ... a birthday cake was on the floor ... and there was my dad, with some paper towels, wiping frosting and candle wax off his shoes.

Fast forward several decades.  As I near the 'Big Five-Oh' myself -- incidentally, no longer so smug in my lineal place as the older brother -- I compare my (mid)life now, to my dad's back then:  daily stresses?  Check.  Money messes?  Check.  Failed business(es)?  Check(check).  Wailing wife and stunned children?  At times, check and check.

But an overriding impulse to laugh through it all?

That most vital touchstone ... Happily, check ✓.

Expressively (Irresponsibly) Yours

I don’t care if I have Ebola, I’m riding my damn bike. - "Kaci Hickox"

When I was back there in seminary school ... there was a guy who used to get bogged down in expressing himself.  Huge sports fan, he was also (like me) a theater geek - and (also like me) used to write and direct things, and strut around like Fellini.

But when it came to expressing himself in public, when not dismissively, almost disdainfully, breaking off sentences to snort in bemusement ... M.D. would flounder for words, often babbling, repeating himself.

To be clear (and fair to the guy), I also have trouble getting sentences spoken in public to make sense ... Sometimes, getting them out of my mouth is a challenge!  Being a writer, I tend to overthink speech:  when speaking, I sometimes wrestle with adjectives ... synonyms, adverbs, metaphors, "flow" ... the same way I do as I when I'm writing.

The difference is that writing, no one's listening to me.  The exercise is done in private, the sweat and the grunting remain offstage.  The only thing a reader "hears" of my written words and stories is the result, not the process.

When speaking, I can sound retarded.  Confused, marble-mouthed (... and I mean no offense whatsoever to people with marbles in their mouths!) ...

Anyway, M.D. from F.U., I suspect, used to struggle similarly.  A fellow wordsmith ... but he also used to get into these paroxysms of frustration over events that he felt he couldn't control.  There was Chernobyl ... Black Monday ... Tiananmen Square and the Hillsborough soccer disaster in England (probably the most frustrating of all to him ... big nutty sports fan that I knew him to be back then).

Then locally, on at least one occasion ... I remember him during a meeting of our relatively small theater department -- convened specifically to address something or other which mattered then -- and M.D. literally sputtering, repeating, "All of the ... BULLSHIT ... has to stop!  We can't continue with this ... BULLSHIT.

"I would just like all of the ... BULLSHIT ... to end!"

"What are you referring to?" he was patiently asked.

"Just ... BULSHIT!  I can't explain the ... BULLSHIT."

Our poet laureate emerged from that, somehow, with a new patina of respect ... as rather than being mocked, he received backslaps, handshakes and commiserations after the meeting ... not to mention going home with my girlfriend that night!

It dawned on me then that by speaking up, be(com)ing a voice, no matter how eloquent (or not) your message ... you will be heard.

Ode to a Self-Absorbed Medical Worker

I've also come to understand all too well the immediate power and limitless reach of the World Wide Web ... a potentially devastating power and overreach, which is only now beginning to be recognized and kept in check:  lids are being placed back on steaming kettles, masks ripped off and new gates erected ...  not at all "ending" Freedom of Speech, but rather, returning to civil discourse.

This is overdue.

So instead of weighing in more than I already have about the stricken "Hero" Without Sense, Dr. Craig Spencer, and pulling punches entirely on the obnoxious and causelessly rebellious Nurse Kaci Hickox, I'll instead put forth the proposition that Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass ...

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

Shoshana Roberts has a fine ass.

... I CANNOT say Shoshana Roberts has a FINE ASS!!!!!!

October Song

"To most men the past is never yesterday, or five minutes ago, but distant, misty epochs some of which are glorious and others abominable." - Henry Miller

"Excuse me!" he whirled, on the airplane in flight, to the fat woman sitting behind him and armed to the teeth with a duty-free magazine.

The woman had rolled up that weapon and clocked him over the head with it ... because he'd had the temerity, in flight, to recline his seat into her overweight lap.

"Excuse me!" he whirled ... and the woman played dumb, trying proudly to play like she hadn't just done that.

I wonder where those two are right now?

I think of the 'ones who got away' sometimes ... those fleeting passengers through my life, who wouldn't have reason to think of me, but nonetheless made their impressions felt and registered on my akasha.

I think of the 'ones who got away' ... From the roadside café in Pennsylvania, that angry, long-legged bird with ripe plumage ... I spied her storming, arms crossed, smoking, stomping down the roadside, carless ...

Left my café booth to ride her.

Many years later, this hotel AV gig ... The "V" guy (I was doing "A") raced sloppily through his post-show chores, because, as he put it, "the wife" promised him "a little fun" if he managed to get home early that day.

I cried at the innocent beauty of life ... then went home to my own wife and "fun" of our own, as we fought about money and tore down our scene.

Growing up, on a ship, northern Michigan waters ... My little baseball cap blew off.  A fair-haired, red-nosed Minnesotan joined me hanging over the railing, waving my baseball cap bye-bye.  Her name was Dawn, that's all I know ...

I wonder where Dawn rises now?

Little League, early effort at teamwork ... I whacked that baseball almost out of the park.  Watched it sail, like Icarus, into the sun.  Then I chased it ... past first base and into the outfield.

No one told me where to run!  No one told me what to do when I hit it ... I had a coach (and had a dad ... but Dad cared as little about sports back then as I do now, if that's possible (and if not less) ... My dad can't be faulted.

... I guess.).

I asked the coach which way to run ... What to do, if I ever hit a baseball.  Not believing, dismissing my foolish question -- because in Coach's athletically fit, trim mind, it couldn't be anything but foolishness -- he answered my dumb, yet sincere, ask with sarcasm.

"See that scoreboard?" he chewed and spit, and smiled sort of shittily.  "Ya run out there, climb up that fence and touch it!  Then run back to the dugout when you hit the ball."

He said that.  I did it.

... My dad watched, his heart sinking faster with each step my cleated feet took, charging and high-stepping out toward that scoreboard ... racing the ball I just whacked toward the sky.

I wonder whatever became of that coach guy?

With every year that passes by, the incidents, visages, in my mind's eye grow clearer, taking on lives of their own as my own life counts down toward an inevitable 9th inning ... beginning now, slowly, to stretch toward the 7th ...

I look back, slow motion sometimes, sometimes smiling, and think of the ones who got away.

"The Memory", ©Jeff Glovsky