Jim Reed's Blog, page 25

FIELD OF DREAMS

Hear Jim Reed’s Red Clay diary podcast on youtube:  https://youtu.be/dScUzM5qHu8

or read his transcript below:

LIFE, ACTUALLY

FIELD OF DREAMS

 

Across the street from our house, when I was a small boy, there was an enormous vacant lot.

On the lot sprang up golden grass, as high as the waist of a small boy. The soft grass was thick, so that if you lay down, no-one could see you from the road or from the houses across the street.

It was a wonderful playground, a battlefield, a guerilla warfare heaven. We boys and girls of the neighborhood could spend hours crawling on our bellies, hidden from the world and often from each other.

Somewhere along the way, we got the idea that battlegrounds such as ours should look like those battlefields in John Wayne and James Whitmore war movies, complete with foxholes and two-way communications. So we dug holes here and there, and staffed our outposts with the equipment of childhood.

One main foxhole, the headquarters, even had a makeshift roof. But only imaginary rains could stay away from us while we hid and met and planned there. Between the foxholes across the golden field we laid old remnants of hosepipes. Through these, we communicated in muffled faraway tones translatable only to us.

We were the Tab Nam Club (no parent could ever have guessed that Tab Nam spelled backwards was Bat Man, defender of good and fighter of evil men and wicked but sexy women), and we had leaders and followers.

Since I was the oldest boy, I was the pretend leader, and because my younger brother Ronny was the youngest kid in the group, he was usually the bad guy. He would always have to get killed first, or go to jail first or be punished first, just because he was too small to defend himself and because he wanted to be part of the group too much to mind the abuse.

When my tomboy sister, Barbara, came out to play with us, she was the leader and I was relegated to invisible follower. She was tougher and older than us, and no-one dared challenge her authority in the field.

Because I was no longer the leader at these times, I could only choose to be a rebel and a loner. That was more heroic to me than being a follower. Once you’ve tasted leadership, there is nothing satisfying about following and being ordered about.

There were various objects strewn across the field, and I’ll never forget them.

One particularly fascinating one was a Z-shaped iron bar about eight inches long. A number of them were used to terrorize the enemy. Two could be put together to form a swastika, the ultimate symbol of badness in those late-1940′s days. The bad guys had to carry these. Or, the Z’s could be thrown dangerously close to the enemy foxhole to keep them in their place.

There were long flexible sticks that became deadly bows for our even more deadly and unreliable homemade arrows. There were trees to climb and fall from, and we frequently did both. There were small pebbles to use in case of attack. And there were the wonderful long golden weeds.

The weeds could be hidden behind, carefully parted to spy on the enemy or the parents (somewhat interchangeable roles), pulled and gnawed on like the cowboys did in Saturday matinees, used as pitchforks, switches, wands, and the like. Very few real toys made it across the street into our field. There was no room for reality there.

Toys were left inside the home and on the front yard, symbols of parents’ desire to give us something joyful to play with, something they didn’t have when they were kids. But our toys were: the field itself and its natural components.

One day, the field disappeared.

We learned that a house was going to be built on our battleground. In place of our military movements a wooden skeleton emerged and our troops retreated across the street into their front yards, and our world got smaller.

The backyard became our field. But the backyard was different. Short grass took the place of golden grain. No foxholes could be dug except to plant Mother’s bushes and flowers. Our dogs could no longer bury their bones in wide open spaces and had to resort to corners of the yard where grass was higher or where people seldom stood.

But the backyard had some advantages the field did not. Advantages, that is, for Mother. She could keep her eye on us better, and we couldn’t hide because the back windows were high up. The only hiding places we had were behind a few bushes and under the house. Under the house was forbidden to us, so we went there a lot, crawling through spider webs and getting smelly with dust, cut with rusted nails, and generally excited by our newfound hiding place.

But ever so often, we would play in the front yard and start across the street at a crisis point in our games, only to look up at the completed house and be reminded that our field was forever gone.

Developers had not asked us kids permission to take away our childhood fields. They hadn’t thought to inquire.

But many decades later, when I am re-visiting home sitting in the swing of my parents’ front porch, I look across the street at what was once the Livingston family’s home and the Crutchfields’ home and see what was once there: a wide, long field salted with little human critters and one overgrown tomboy laughing and getting dirty and rolling in redbugs and passing secret messages to one another in the hosepipe trenches.

And I imagine one retired developer sitting in his Woodland Hills air-conditioned home and living off the interest generated by selling little kids’ hearts to families who had every right to want a piece of land, but who had no right at all to take over our particular golden-grained field of dreamy dreams

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

 

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TILL WE HAVE FACES

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay diary podcast on youtube: https://youtu.be/6vlZ_enbvek

or read his transcript:

LIFE, ACTUALLY

TILL WE HAVE FACES

The smelly old Ritz movie theatre in the heart of 1940s-50s downtown Tuscaloosa is where I get my first glimpse of play-like robbers and bandits and desperados and thieves.

On the big black-and-white screen, bad guys and gals seem to need only one item to turn themselves into lawless—thus, very exciting—bandidos and gangsters.

That one required item is a bandanna. 

I’m way back in time right now. Bear with me.

My childhood pals are sitting here with me, engrossed with the action in front of us. Lots of stylized punching and wrestling and shoot-em-up chaos is choreographed for our pleasure. The greasy popcorn and shared soft drink last a long time, because we want the last gulp, the final crunch, to occur when THE END pops up, when the hero and his best buddy the horse ride off into the sunset, their mission accomplished.

Funny thing about bandannas. I always wonder why some dude covers his nose and mouth, then suddenly becomes unidentifiable to everybody on the range. He’s wearing the same prairie-fragrant clothes, waving the exact six-shooter holstered until just moments ago. His voice is the same, his lope unchanged.

I decide that it’s just a movie. This bandanna-disguise would not work anywhere but in Hollywood. Imagine me, running into the family home, hiding my face with a trusty bandanna, then grabbing a handful of candy and rushing out, knowing that nobody will realize it’s just Jimbo.

“Why, we ought to call the police,” sister Barbara would say. “Somebody just stole our candy.”

“Uh, who was it?” I will say.

“I have no idea. He was your size, wearing the same cowboy outfit as you. But half of his face was covered by a mask, so there’s no way we can tell his true identity.”

Of course, this scenario will never work. It’s only Jimbo, masking up for action like actors on a projection screen.

Where does this fond memory come from? What makes me suddenly recall childhood in the middle of the day in the middle of my old bookstore, in the middle of exchanging books for cash?

Why, my customer is wearing a bandanna. I am wearing a bandanna. Just like those range riders at the Ritz Theatre.

We are suddenly characters from childhood, breathing into cotton face covers and trying to understand our mutual muffled mutterings. I smile extra big, hoping my crinkled skin will help the purchaser know that I am being polite. I speak as clearly as possible to overcome smothered words.

And you know something? There are regular patrons I do not recognize. They don’t look the same when masked.

So, I guess I might actually have gotten away with candy theft back in the day. Or not. You can’t get away with anything when an older sister knows everything about you and your behavior.

Maybe I owe my life of clean living and no crime to my big sister.

There’s always the chance that a bandanna just won’t do the trick. I’d definitely be the only member of the Tuscaloosa Marauder Gang to get caught.

Just my luck  

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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VALLEY OF THE TRAINS

Catch Jim’s Red Clay Diary podcast on youtube: 

https://youtu.be/H-ZIMcoZBc4
or read the transcript below: 

LIFE, ACTUALLY

 

VALLEY OF THE TRAINS

No matter where I go in this urban village, railroad tracks crisscross my path. Wherever I am, there is soon to be a train rumbling along this way or that way. So many laid-steel pathways are bisecting my travels that I no longer pay much attention to them.

But the trains cannot be ignored. They have been around so long that just a lone, low-pitched whistle can trigger a memory.

Here in the Valley, each train’s passing is echoed. Each foghorn blast bounces off foothills and echoes somewhere in my head.

Lying abed in the wee hours, I can hear the dinosaur howl that startles memory and imagination. I close my eyes and imagine that the southbound-westbound engines are pulling their mysterious graffiti decorated boxcars through Jefferson County toward Tuscaloosa and Meridian and New Orleans and beyond.

I recall a long-ago youth who imagined that he could hop a freight and take off to climes unknown and adventures unpredicted and have the time of his life.

So, the trains and tracks are always present, permanent leftovers from a time when the valley bustled with iron and coal and steelmaking and smokestacks a-billowing.

As a grown-up, I am annoyed when a slow-moving behemoth causes me to pause in my self-important journey. But, as the Youth still inside me mutters, “Yes, but imagine what’s in those linked cars, guess what kinds of people are staring at me as I stare back at their passing faces. Marvel at the lives of engineers and porters and maintainers who keep the monster revved up and running.”

I smile and enjoy the moment, roll down my window to take in the clanging and howling and friction squeal of metal against metal. I watch the precariously stacked top-heavy vehicles roll along, balancing the tightwire. I hope against hope that the next wreck never occurs.

Later, I pause and park on a bridge, gaze down at the tracks and trains below, puzzle over signs and symbols and switchings galore, and pretend that perhaps one of these days I will all-aboard and begin a journey unlike any other journey, not knowing where I am headed or where I will wind up.

It would be nice to take a deep meditative breath and appreciate the ride

 

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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 Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

 

LIFE, ACTUALLY

Catch Jim’s podcast here: 

https://youtu.be/1b8S6XTD0f8
 or read the transcript below:

LIFE, ACTUALLY

FEELING GOOD ALL UNDER

Every Tuesday morning, the laundry freshly done and most things in their place, I pick out the newest pair of undershorts in the drawer and slide them on. As the week progresses or regresses, I put on a fresh pair each day (yes, I do take off the used pair before doing so) and try to face the world with strong and white undergirdings bolstering a flagging confidence.

You know what happens next, of course. By the end of the week and through the weekend, I run out of the newest pairs and start digging down into the drawer for older, slightly ragged shorts until, at last, by Monday I am starting the week off with underwear that is holy but not righteous, as Ma used to say.

The pair I am wearing now is the most tattered I own, since the laundry is a day late.

Now just suppose that this is all metaphoric, and just suppose that the state of my underwear is roughly equivalent to my state of mind and level of energy?

What would happen if one Tuesday morning I began the week wearing the raggedest underwear and progressively turned to newer pairs as the week waned? Would my attitude be thus affected, would I be saving my high-self-esteem underwear for the most worn-down and wearisome part of the week—thus giving me an extra boost to make it crawling through Saturday night toward the Day of Rest on Sunday?

Maybe, if this works, I will no longer find myself sitting in my ragged underwear on my favorite equally ragged easy-chair on Sunday afternoon, staring into space and dozing, trying to rev up my juices for the week ahead.

The secret of life-energy may be in here somewhere.

I mean, don’t we all still believe in magic, and isn’t that why we keep getting up in the morning and trying to tackle each day anew with the idea that there’s just got to be something better about this dawn?

Without this magic-potion kind of thinking, we’re just another bunch of trembling primitives waiting to be eaten or run over, and taken to the emergency room with—horror of horrors—ragged underwear

(an entry from Jim’s Red Clay Diary, first published in his 1998 book, DAD’S TWEED COAT Small Wisdoms, Hidden Comforts, Unexpected Joys)

 © 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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The daily journey from sunrise to sunrise is filled with

HALF A LIFETIME AWAY IN SEVENTH HEAVEN

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary podcast: https://youtu.be/LZ-MCZ3Swcg

or read his transcript below:

HALF A LIFETIME AWAY IN SEVENTH HEAVEN

Eldest grand-daughter Jessica is somewhere adrift in her thirties, but in the pages of my Red Clay Diary, she is at the moment a couple of decades younger. We are getting ready to prepare dinner together.

Here are my notes. 

I’m sitting at the kitchen table, observing Jessica. She’s 13 years old these days, and 13-year-olds must be watched and carefully considered, since time passes so fast and before you know it a 13-year-old will be dozens of years older, and you won’t have any idea where the time went, where the moment went, where that 13-year-old got off to.

Jessica is sitting at the table in front of four soup bowls, or maybe they’re salad bowls, only they don’t contain soup or salad. Into one bowl she has crumbled up a bunch of Ritz Crackers, another bowl contains milk, another is filled with flour and the fourth holds several eggs she has whisked together into a sunshiny blend. She’s had me cut up a lot of de-boned chicken breasts into nugget-sized hunks–the only way to do it, she insists.

Over on the stove, the wok awaits usage, since Jessica instructs me not to turn the heat on till she’s through doing what she’s doing at the table, which is: each hunk of chicken must be dipped one at a time into all four bowls, until the hunk looks kind of flaky and golden and quite raw. The process takes a while, but that’s OK because we’re chatting a little bit and she’s got the TV turned up high so she can watch and listen to one of her favorite shows–Seventh Heaven, or something like that.

Earlier, we’ve gone to Bruno’s Supermarket and bought everything on Jessica’s list: Chocolate chip mint ice cream, corn oil, pre-packaged salad (Jessica likes it because she says it doesn’t have to be washed and it’s already cut up. I wash it thoroughly, just in case somebody nicknamed Booger has not practiced good hygiene the day he packs the plastic bag.), frozen lima beans for microwave zapping, and whatever else Jessica has decreed for the ideal meal at home.

Process is important to Jessica. Everything must be done a specified way, a specific way, or the meal will be ruined. She’s a particularly finicky eater, so finding a meal that she’ll actually take seriously is tricky. She’d rather not eat at all than eat something she’s never tried and has made a firm decision against.

Anyhow, we get this meal cooked to Jessica’s satisfaction, and we even clean up the kitchen so that there will be no trace of the havoc we’ve caused in her father’s absence.

The deep-fried chicken nuggets are good–we’ve cooked about four times as much as we can eat. And we’re both somewhat satisfied with ourselves. She gets what she wants–a meal just like her Aunt Vikki cooks. I get what I want–a nice meal at home, not prepared by strangers, prepared with love and camaraderie. And I get the company of my grand-daughter.

We settle in to wait for her father’s return, watching this TV show she loves, Seventh Heaven,  and the night is quite all right, as nights on earth or in Seventh Heaven sometimes are

© 2020 A.D. by Jim Reed

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 Weekly Podcast: REDCLAYDIARY

LITTLE BIRDIES DO WHAT THEY CAN DO

LITTLE BIRDIES DO WHAT THEY CAN DO

An old wood frame home like ours, built in 1906, is an echo chamber. Each movement, each settling, each creaking stair, each dropped fork, is heard throughout the structure. Like a living being, this old house keeps us aware of what’s going on both inside and just outside, through sound and vibration.

Tonight, spasmodic fluttering within the downstairs fireplace indicates we have a visitor trapped behind a cast iron shield. I freeze in place, making sure the noise is not imagined. A second flutter is all that’s required…and there it is!

“I think we have an unwilling guest in the fireplace…probably dropped down the chimney,” I tell Liz. Her brow furrows with concern and she helps me verify the shuffling.

We’ve done this before. We drift into action. Liz retrieves a small blanket, I find a soft rubber-stoppered reacher we use to retrieve wandering objects.

We brush aside first concerns—fear of a panicked bird flying into our faces, fear that in the process of capture and release we might harm the critter, fear that a freed animal just might hole up someplace obscure and never be found. Things like that.

But, as age and experience kick in, we re-enter reality and know that we simply have to face this challenge and do what we can do.

I groan as I pull back the fireplace covering inch by inch, Liz stands ready with blanket, I clutch the reacher, the theory being that if I can capture the bird long-distance I won’t risk hurting it or being pecked,

Another inch and a large totally soot-black bird zooms past us and heads for the suddenly white sky above. Unfortunately, the sky is actually the high ceiling and little birdie bounces from room to room, confused that the heavens now have plaster limits.

Finally, as we follow this displaced creature, our hearts beating as fast as little birdie’s, it comes to rest on the kitchen floor just long enough to have a tossed blanket restrict its flight.

Liz gently holds the fluttering body through the blanket, takes it to the front yard next to the bird bath, and releases it to its homeland—the great urban outdoors.

“The bird didn’t move, but maybe it just needs to rest,” Liz says. We grin at each other, concerned about the future of little birdie, relieved that we can go to bed knowing that we at least tried.

Next morning, Liz reports the bird has disappeared, so we try to imagine its birdly existence has been guaranteed.

I drive to work, and a tune plays itself in my head:

“Little birdie, why you worry like you do?

Don’t you worry, you just do what you can do.”

It’s a love song by Vince Guaraldi, about a small yellow un-blackened bird named Woodstock. When trouble arises, don’t panic, just do what you can do, he seems to say.

Bye-bye, blackened bird.

You and Liz and I survived the evening.

We three just do what we can do

 

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

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BUTTERBEAN POKER MEMORIES OF GOOD TIMES PAST

Catch Jim Reed’s Red Clay Diary at https://youtu.be/sSRe5w8d2ro

or read his transcript below:

BUTTERBEAN POKER MEMORIES OF GOOD TIMES PAST

I’ve had some good times during an incredibly long life in the Deep South. Now and then one of those times pops up and makes me smile, makes me yearn to spend another happy Sunday afternoon with all those long-gone friends and family from the past.

Here’s a page from the Red Clay Diary.

Far ago and long away, I dreamed a dream one day.

The time is far, far ago, but it is ever fresh in memory.

It is Sunday afternoon in this village, when getting together with kinfolk and outlaws and in-laws is so much fun. Now this may not be you young’uns’ idea of partying, but it was everything we knew to do, in order to have a good time. Here are some snapshots.:

Dried butterbeans under a tree in Uncle Pat and Aunt Elizabeth McGee’s sideyard. No, we don’t eat the dried butterbeans except one time, and once is enough. What my uncles do with the butterbeans is use them instead of chips, to sit on the ground and play poker. The summertime buggy and humid heat is barely noticed, because the Games and the Slow Roast are the thing. Two games go on simultaneously. The poker game—in which all the winner gets is a bunch of dried beans—and the baseball game on the radio. You see, back in these times recalled, nobody has portable radios, so the Big Game emanates from one of the old cars in the family. An uncle pulls his vehicle near the Game and leaves the door open so we can all hear the big plays, the excited crowd, the crisp snap of wood against hide, the terse shouts of the umpire.

The Slow Roast is right next to the game—big hunks of barbeque turning over an open-pit fire, smoking up the woods and forcing all humans who care about eating to salivate involuntarily.

This is Division of Labor stuff. The men are in charge of staying up all night, tending the fire, biding their time with poker and baseball, and trying their best to set sedentary examples of good behavior for dozens of run-amok kids. The women do everything else.

Mind you, this is the post-economic-depression era when all men work hard at hard-time jobs, when Sundays with family are their only respite, when for a few hours they can pretend to be hotshot gamblers and master chefs and wizened tribal chiefs.

Meanwhile, cousins and playmates are free to roam wild in Uncle Pat’s nearby woods, chase after and be chased by spiders and snakes, attract red bugs and ticks, laugh out loud and wrestle, play their own baseball game in the nearby cornfield, and in general let out all the energy that has been pent up during the week.

The women organize food and wrangle kids and socialize and gossip and knit and darn and set tables and wash dishes and collect detritus that the men later dispose of. Both men and women share in the arduous task of making gallons of ice cream on the spot, emptying ice and salt into buckets while older kids take turns cranking and cranking and cranking, their only motivation being the sweet taste of fresh peaches absorbed into the creamiest ice cream you can ever imagine.

Everybody knows their responsibilities in these olden days, nobody hides from helping out, everyone comes to each other’s rescue when a bruise appears, all accidents are tended to in gentle good humor, all conflicts mediated and peacefully settled, all passions channeled for the good of the one-day communion.

At the end of the long day, each family sits wearily and happily in automobiles, waiting while relatives lean over open driver windows and say 45-minute lingering goodbyes to each other. Nobody wants to leave the scene, everybody has to, and, regardless of how tired and spent and scraped and bloated and bug-bit, we can’t help but think about the next reunion when we’ll do it all again.

Yep, far ago and long away, I dream a dream, a dream that still seems true when I look at the results of those strong and handsome adult relatives who set such powerful examples for us kids. The truth is in watching those kids today, now elderly kinfolk with their own kids and kids of kids, each year once more holding a reunion and passing down the generations a rich appreciation of tribe and family and genetics and mutual support.

Right now, because of the pandemic, the reunions are on hold. I miss them all the more.

When we finally do get to draw close and resume these happy events, there will be much hugging and cherishing and storytelling, as we catch up and attempt to make good all the fun times missed

 

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

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LITTLE JOURNEYS INTERSECTION BY INTERSECTION

LITTLE JOURNEYS INTERSECTION BY INTERSECTION

The high-up traffic signal before me dangles in the wind. My car automatically obeys, comes to an idling stop, giving me time to glance around and see what’s to see this sunny day.

Out the left driver’s window a greyhaired man sits atop a decorative brick barricade on the street corner. Twenty feet away towers a cold glass and steel medical facility. The greyhaired man is wearing hospital slippers and an open-backed green hospital smock, his legs bare from the knees down. He sits alone in puzzled silence, suspended somewhere between co-pay instructions and the healing arts and a someday hospice.

Ahead of me, the widescreen windshield exposes static buildings and passing pedestrians, pedestrians focused on their journeys and oblivious to the solitary greyhaired man.

Out the right-hand passenger window I see static faces of people who wait…wait for a bus, wait for an Uber, wait for a lift. One face animatedly converses with an invisible phone pal, another face squints against the sun to see the traffic light, yet another face looks up to his package-toting mom and squeezes tight her free hand. Another face stares dreamily at nothing much.

In the rear view mirror a driver peers at her reflection and adjusts makeup.

The signal clicks and changes color and grants permission to my car to proceed.

All the lives I’ve just borne witness to are whisked away as I continue my journey to the next stop and the next up-close views of this dazzling and diverse and sometimes delightful Deep South village

© Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

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THE HIDDEN WORLD OF THE UPSIDE-DOWN ROCKING CHAIR

THE HIDDEN WORLD OF THE UPSIDE-DOWN ROCKING CHAIR

Thirteen vertical wooden bars. That’s all it takes to imprison me today.

Today I am four years old, way back in time, in the living room of my family’s small bungalow in long-ago Deep South Alabama.

This is a time when a gigantic world war is winding down. Soon my military uncles will be wending their way homeward from Europe, carrying purple hearts and small souvenirs, sporting battle scars, telling riveting stories to us adoring civilian kids.

While we wait for the world to calm down and get going again, we summer children just play and entertain ourselves, as if nothing strange is happening in the rest of the world.

That’s why I am behind bars, waiting for older sister Barbara to discharge me from jail and proceed to play cops and robbers and cowboys and Tarzan again.

The jail is actually an old curved-wood rocking chair with thirteen posts that, when turned upside-down, makes a great cage for small tykes to crawl into. I peer through the spaces between the posts and await my fate.

Mother used to rock us kids to sleep in this chair, but since we no longer require infant care, the chair is a perfect time machine.

Later, after we’ve tired of conflict games, the inverted rocking chair becomes a teller cage. I’m the banker dispensing change and old cancelled checks between the posts. Barbara is the pretend grown woman who is extracting pennies and nickels from Mother’s old purse. We try our best to imitate adults and make smart monetary decisions.

Our Aunt Gladys is postmistress of the tiny nearby town of Peterson. When we visit, we see her reassuring face through metal bars as she takes care of postal patrons. She is framed by green combination-lock mail boxes.

With this knowledge in mind, the upside-down rocker becomes a postal cage with one kid playing Aunt Gladys, the other pretending to purchase used stamps to place upon discarded postcards and envelopes. Play money consists of checker pieces, butterbeans, bus tokens and whatever else seems to be negotiable.

When break time occurs, I sip my lemoned sugared iced tea and, turning the chair rightside-up, sit and rock myself into daydreams. The chair’s creaks and moans are music to my ears. They become sound effects to accompany Dr. Frankenstein’s loping monster.

After sundown, after we’ve had all the firefly-catching, mosquito-bite-scratching, banana-popsicle-munching fun we can stand for one day, I retire to my small bedroom, listen to the cricket chorus through open windows, snuggle beneath handmade quilts, and soon nightdream about heroic soldiers and brave jungle natives and squeaky  pedal cars and Santa in his faraway workshop, carefully handcrafting my next Christmas surprise.

The forlorn rocking chair sits in the darkened living room, awaiting the attention it craves.

And, today, many decades later, the rickety old chair still rests in mellow retirement at my faraway Deep South home. The chair is too fragile to rock infants in, but too precious to send away to strangers. I smile each time I pass by, recalling how sweet and innocent we kids were, how sweetness and innocence still abide somewhere deep, deep inside me

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

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ANTICIPATING 364 UNBIRTHDAYS

ANTICIPATING 364 UNBIRTHDAYS

What do I get each time another birthday rolls around?

What is my reward? Where is my gift?

More to the point, what makes me think I have a reward coming my way, each time another 365 days pass me by?

What is so significant about our birthdays, mine and your’n? (Don’t let “your’n” throw you—-it’s just one of those middle English words that a bookie nerd like me finds swimming among the silt in my brain.)

Speaking of silt, how many hundreds of songs and poems and stories are indelibly branded into my memory?

This is definitely one of them:

MARCH HARE:

A very merry unbirthday to me

MAD HATTER:

To who?

MARCH HARE:

To me

MAD HATTER:

Oh you!

MARCH HARE:

A very merry unbirthday to you

MAD HATTER:

Who me?

MARCH HARE:

Yes, you!

MAD HATTER:

Oh, me!

MARCH HARE:

Let’s all congratulate us with another cup of tea

A very merry unbirthday to you!

MAD HATTER:

Now, statistics prove, prove that you’ve one birthday

MARCH HARE:

Imagine, just one birthday every year

MAD HATTER:

Ah, but there are three hundred and sixty four unbirthdays!

MARCH HARE:

Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer

BOTH:

A very merry unbirthday to you, to you

ALICE:

To me?

MAD HATTER:

To you!

BOTH:

A very merry unbirthday

ALICE:

For me?

MARCH HARE:

For you!

MAD HATTER:

Now blow the candle out my dear

And make your wish come true

BOTH:

A merry merry unbirthday to you!

***

Now, why is it that I can’t remember where I placed my Diet Coke five minutes ago, but I can recall hundreds of songs and poems and stories like this from my ever present childhood?

Don’t strain yourself—I don’t really need to know the answer to this question. I just want to ruminate and contemplate and masticate…eating my breakfast and thinking useless but entertaining thoughts all the while.

Go ahead and laugh at me. It’s a life I’m stuck with.

And during the best of my times, I celebrate at least 364 times a year.

Quick! Let’s appreciate and savor our unbirthdays with gusto, now and then distracting ourselves with the delusion that all is right with the world.

We do deserve a break from all this now and then, don’t you think?

Lewis Carroll and Jack Kerouac and Aldous Huxley and Steve Martin all know the value of self-delusion. Each has a different way of celebrating silliness.

My way is to share random thoughts and allow you to find your own significance or distraction as a result.

Couldn’t hurt.

Precisely why we’re gathered here to cheer

 

 © Jim Reed 2020 A.D.

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