David N. Walker's Blog, page 36

Fancy–Volume 2

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Miscellaneous Mondays, we talk about whatever happens to pop into my head—or any suggestion you may have made for a topic.

If it seems like I’ve been writing about my own books a lot lately, I guess I have. After all, promoting our books is the reason most of us blog in the first place. Don’t get me wrong—I love writing and posting blogs, and I hope you enjoy reading them—but always there is the hope underneath all this that people will buy more of my books.

Today, I want to announce that volume 2 of the Fancy series is now available. Fancy: The Search takes up where Fancy left off. Bank robbers had just ridden out of town in Fancy’s buggy with her baby sister Danni still in it. Follow her as she tracks them across five states in an attempt to get her sister back.

Fancy: The Search is available for Kindles. For the paperback version, click here. For some reason Barnes & Noble is having technical problems getting it online. I’ll put the link in the “Fancy” section of this website as soon as it is up and running. This novella contains a stand-alone story, but it’s also part of the Fancy series and would be more meaningful and enjoyable if you read Fancy first.

Soon I’ll be announcing a blog tour to promote my first two books. There’ll be some prizes offered, too, so be sure to tune in. Meanwhile, just know that I appreciate each and every one of you who read this blog. I’d appreciate comments, too.

What do you think about using blogs to promote the author’s books? Why do you prefer e-books over paperbacks or vice versa?

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx (at) gmail (dot) com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Miscellaneous Mondays Tagged: Advice, Authorship, Books, David N. Walker author, e-Books, Life, Life experience, Life lessons, Life truths, Life values, Personal development, Self-help

Making Sense with Numbers

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Forensic Fridays, we dissect the English language to see what it’s made of and how to use it properly. Well, at least we do that on most Fridays.

Today’s subject isn’t exactly a matter of grammar, although it does pertain to communicating. It’s more a matter of simple math and common sense.

I read two different obituaries this week—yes, I do read them since people my age appear there now and then—involving people approaching their 71st birthdays but proclaiming in the text that they were in their 70th year. Really?

Does that mean before their first birthdays they were in their zeroeth year? I don’t think so. The day you were born, you entered your first year of life. At the end of that year, you had your first birthday and entered your second year of life.

Since we don’t consider the day of birth to be our first birthday, each birthday ends the year it signifies. Turned 35 on your last birthday? Then you’re in your 36th year right now.

Similarly, since there is no such thing as the year zero, New Year’s Day of year 1 represented the end of year one and the beginning of year two. Right now, we are in the 2013th year of the Christian calendar. New Year’s Eve will mark the end of that year and the beginning of the 2014th year. Next year will be designated 2013 because we will have completed 2013 years as we enter it.

As I said above, it’s not rocket science—just logic and simple math. No grammar involved here, but let’s do try to communicate in a rational manner.

What grammatical misuse bothers you? What particular area of grammar would you like help with? I’d love to hear and help.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx (at) gmail (dot) com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Forensic Fridays Tagged: David N. Walker author, Editing tips, Grammar and usage, Grammar rules, grammar tips, writing tips

SURELY

If you abide in Me and My word abides in you, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

On Worshipful Wednesdays, we take a look at God’s word and His kingdom to see what we can learn about ourselves, Him and/or our relationships with Him.

A visiting teacher in our Sunday School class is doing a three-week study on the 23rd Psalm. You may have learned that psalm as a young child, like I did. Anyhow, as our teacher talked about the first couple of verses, I was drawn to the last verse, which says in the New American Standard Version, Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

Other versions says Surely goodness and mercy . . . I really think “mercy” conveys a more specific meaning than “lovingkindness,” but that’s not really my point here.

When I read this last verse, I was reminded of a sermon I heard 25 or 30 years ago. The preacher was a dear man named Jesse McElreath, who was pastor of Lake Country Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

They’ve dropped “Baptist” from the name since then, but at that time it was affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. In fact, Jesse at one time held a pretty high-up position in that denomination’s headquarters in Nashville. I don’t know if the denomination dropped the church or the church dropped the denomination, but I suspect there was a little too much hand-raising, dancing, healing and deliverance going on there to suit the Southern Baptists.

Anyhow, Jesse was stressing three things we can depend on from this psalm: mercy, goodness, and surely. I thought, Say what? “Surely” is not a noun. It’s not an attribute like goodness and mercy. What’s this man talking about?

But the more he talked, and the more I thought about it, the more I agreed with him that surely is a quality we can depend on from God, just as are goodness and mercy. His point was that we can be certain of God’s ability and faithfulness to fulfill His promises. SURELY!!

It was a novel way of getting a point across, but I still remember it over a quarter of a century later, just as if it were yesterday. We don’t have to wonder with God. If we accept His Son as our Savior, our eternal destiny is assured. Sealed. Forever. SURELY.

Have a New Testament passage or concept you’d like to see discussed here? Maybe something you’ve never quite understood. I’d love to hear from you about that, too. I’ll try my best to explain it.

For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Worshipful Wednesdays Tagged: 23rd Psalm, Christian, David N. Walker author, Godly Wisdom, inspiration

My Muse Takes Over

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Miscellaneous Mondays, we talk about whatever happens to pop into my head—or any suggestion you may have made for a topic. Uh oh! Looks like I’m in a fight for control of the keyboard again. Excuse me for a moment while I—

Hi, there. I’m David’s muse. I enjoyed reading last week’s post so much—you know, the one where Fancy took over and talked about herself—that I decided to wrest the keyboard away from David and write my own story. I wanted to tell you how the book Heaven Sent came about. David’s not very good at promoting his own stuff, so I thought I’d help him out.

David has led a Sunday School class for years, and each Sunday morning when he gets up to make announcements and pray for his classmates’ needs, he starts out by reading something he received in an email. Sometimes it’s a joke or a series of one-liners, but it’s often a bit of Christian wisdom or inspiration. Over the years, he has accumulated a large number of these pieces.

About a year ago, he got to thinking (Well, he’s not a very original thinker. I had to clue him in on this.) that he had enough of these stories to fill a book. So, at my suggestion, he went through all the stories he’d accumulated and picked out the ones that involved Christian inspiration or wisdom.

A lot of them were anonymous, but for all the ones where a source was attributed, he wrote for permission to include them in a book. Several people gave him permission to use their stories, so he included them and omitted those whose authors either said no or didn’t respond.

Then he went through and thought about each of the stories and wrote his own comments to each. He finally decided to include one piece his daughter wrote and three of his own original pieces.

The book was ready last March, but he is so clueless about so many things, it took him three more months to get it onto Amazon.com as an e-book for Kindles. Since I’m just his inspirational muse, I couldn’t help him with all that technical stuff, so he had to flounder along on his own. Well, not completely. If you read the acknowledgments, you’ll see he had help from several people.

Anyhow, as slow as he is at learning all this stuff, he finally got the book on Barnes & Noble’s website for Nooks, and he trudged through CreateSpace to put the paperback together, so now you can order it in any of these formats. If you’ll click on the title, Heaven Sent, you can find how to order it in one format or another.

David seems to be getting mad, so I suppose I should let him have his keyboard back. I hope you enjoyed this. He would never have thought of doing it himself.

Okay, this is David now. I’m back. I think my muse did a good enough job here that I’ll go ahead and post what he wrote. I do have to correct one thing he said, though. He took credit for the idea of doing this post on his own, but he actually stole the idea from my friend Marcia A. Richards. Her character, Eve Carrington, took over her blog the other day to post about herself, and my muse was looking over my shoulder as I read it. Actually, Fancy was looking over my other shoulder and decided to hijack my keyboard before this silly muse came up with the idea. She ran her story last week.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Miscellaneous Mondays Tagged: Advice, Authorship, David N. Walker author, Life, Life experience, Life lessons, Life truths, Life values, Personal development, Self-help

Right Now or Soon?

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Forensic Fridays, we dissect the English language to see what it’s made of and how to use it properly. Today, we’re going to examine another pair of words that are not interchangeable, although they are frequently used as though they were.

We’ve all seen statements like “I’m presently busy doing . . .” or “She’s presently involved in a lot of . . .” We’ve probably even made such statements ourselves. After all, “present” means “right now,” doesn’t it?

Yes, it does, but “presently” does not. “Presently” means “soon.” It is properly used to mean something will take place in the near future. Could be five minutes or three days, but sometime soon. “I’ll feed the dog presently.” or “I’ve got to finish doing my hair, but I’ll be ready presently.”

The term we confuse “presently” with is “at present.” This term really does mean right now. “I’m engaged in a project at present.” These two terms are not identical, and one cannot be substituted for the other.

Generally speaking, only one of these terms—presently—is commonly misused. I don’t recall hearing someone say, “I’ll feed the dog at present,” meaning in just a little while. You could, however, say, “I’m busy at present, but I’ll feed the dog presently.”

Remember, “at present” means right now or currently. “Presently” means soon.

What grammatical misuse bothers you? What particular area of grammar would you like help with? I’d love to hear and help.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Forensic Fridays Tagged: David N. Walker author, Editing tips, Grammar and usage, Grammar rules, grammar tips, writing tips

Faith

If you abide in Me and My word abides in you, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

On Worshipful Wednesdays, we take a look at God’s word and His kingdom to see what we can learn about ourselves, Him and/or our relationships with Him.

Ever wonder why there are so many things we don’t and can’t understand about God? About how and why He does things? I would imagine you have. I think we all do from time to time.

Why doesn’t He explain things to us when we wonder about them? Why does He leave us to muddle along without knowing the answers to so many questions?

Have you ever made a statement like, “If God would only explain this to me, I’d _______? (You fill in the blank.) When you were growing up, you expected your parents to explain things to you. You expected your science teacher to explain things to you. Surely God is smarter than our parents and teachers. Why won’t He answer all of our questions? Explain everything we don’t understand?

Last week we talked about the difference between faith and religion. Click here if you missed that one. Remember, we looked at the definition of faith from Unger’s Bible Dictionary, which said “the word is used in scripture most frequently in a subjective sense, denoting a moral or spiritual quality of individuals, by virtue of which men are held in relations of confidence in God and fidelity to Him. . . .”

Both Christianity and Judaism are based on faith. We’ve never seen God, but we believe in Him. We’ve never seen heaven, but we believe it’s there. No Christian since the first century has touched Jesus, but that doesn’t keep us from believing in Him.

You don’t have to believe in the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls or the Empire State Building. You can go there and see these things. Faith is not involved. You know for a fact that they exist.

No faith is required to believe that rivers flow downhill or that leaves fall to the ground rather than rising into the sky. We see these things happen, and we understand the law of gravity behind them, so faith doesn’t enter in.

God wants us to have faith in Him. He wants us to worship Him, enter into a relationship with Him, pray to Him because of our faith, not because we saw him at Wal-mart the other day or shook hands with him at church last Sunday. He wants our whole experience with Him to be based on faith.

If He told us what’s around the next corner, if He let us know exactly how our loved one’s bout with cancer is going to turn out, if He came down and appeared in person in each of our homes, there would be no faith. Our belief would not have to be based on trusting what He said without seeing the proof. If He showed us the proof, no trust would be involved.

I don’t know about you, but I’m glad He doesn’t reveal everything to me. If I could completely understand Him, if I knew the answers to all those questions and didn’t have to trust Him on faith, He wouldn’t be a very big God. I’m glad He’s far too big a God for me to see, touch and understand.

Have a New Testament passage or concept you’d like to see discussed here? Maybe something you’ve never quite understood. I’d love to hear from you about that, too. I’ll try my best to explain it.

For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Worshipful Wednesdays Tagged: Christian, David N. Walker author, Godly Wisdom, inspiration

Fancy Writes About Herself

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Miscellaneous Mondays, we talk about whatever happens to pop into my head—or any suggestion you may have made for a topic.

Somebody please tell Marcia Richard I didn’t really steal her idea. Fancy insisted on taking over my keyboard today to tell a little bit about herself. I’ll try to get her back under control, but she may not let me until she posts her story.

Hello, readers. I’m Fancy. Well, my name is actually Clara Faye Greene, but no one ever calls me that. When I was a baby, my daddy nicknamed me Fancy, and the name stuck. I’m so used to hearing it, whenever anyone calls me Clara Faye, I look around to see whom they are talking to.

I was the happiest little girl in the world, living on our cotton farm just north of Florence, Alabama. It wasn’t a big plantation with slaves like some of our neighbors had—just a small farm Daddy worked by himself. Well, until I was big enough to help him.

Despite giving me the name Fancy, I think Daddy really wanted me to be a boy. He taught me to hunt and fish and work the farm just like a father would teach a son. And when my mama wasn’t watching, he taught me to play poker, too. He made his living playing poker on riverboats and such before he met Mama, but she made him quit. She said it wasn’t respectable.

You can tell I love Daddy. I loved Mama too, but she died giving birth to my little sister Danni. Okay, Darlene Danielle if you must know, but we always call her Danni.

When Mama died, I sorta became Danni’s mama. I was ten at the time, and I looked after her and did most of the cooking and stuff like that, but I’d get out into the fields with Daddy anytime I could.

As I said, I was the happiest girl in the world . . . until that horrible war came along. I don’t know much about politics and things like that. The Yankees say they’re fighting us to free the slaves, but I don’t know. Most of us don’t own any slaves. Daddy doesn’t hold with one man owning another. Besides, I’ve heard that Yankees enslave their own children in factories where they have to work harder than most Southern slaves do.

Well, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, when the Confederacy called, my daddy, being a patriotic man, answered the call and went off to serve. That left me, a fourteen year-old girl, to plant the cotton and raise the crop by myself, along with taking care of Danni and doing all the housework.

Even though I stayed busy from daylight to dark and went to be dog-tired every night, I still loved my life. I knew Daddy would be back as soon as he could to take over working the farm again. But then one day I got that terrible telegram telling me he’d been killed at some place called Manassas, wherever that is.

I was so grief-stricken I couldn’t do anything for a day or two, and when I told my sister he’d been killed, she went crazy for awhile. While I was trying to get my head on straight and get Danni under control, I started having all that trouble with our parson. And then that low-down skunk Sylvester Fochs—everyone calls him Sly Fochs, and the name fits him—decided to steal my farm from me.

Good gosh. I’m getting tired just trying to tell you what happened. Maybe you’d better get the book and read it. Fancy is available for Kindle and Nook or as a paperback from CreateSpace. Just click on the version you want to order. While you’re doing that, I’m gonna put Danni to bed and see if I can get some sleep, too.

Wow. I thought I’d never get the keyboard back from her. Fancy is a determined young lady when she sets her mind to something.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Miscellaneous Mondays Tagged: Advice, David N. Walker author, Life, Life experience, Life lessons, Life truths, Life values, Personal development, Self-help

Agreement in Number and Gender

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Forensic Fridays, we dissect the English language to see what it’s made of and how to use it properly.

In a comment on last week’s post, Denise Young mentioned that one of her pet peeves involved the inconsistency in number in the use of pronouns. I agree with her completely.

What the heck are you talking about, David? What number?

Do you remember that day you woke up in grammar class for a moment and the teacher said something about pronouns needing to agree in number and gender with their antecedents? You don’t remember that? Okay, let’s look at some examples.

She showed the girls her new dress. In that sentence, She, in addition to being the subject of the sentence is the antecedent of the pronoun her. She and her agree in number and gender, because they are both singular and feminine.

You would never say she showed the girls his new dress, or she showed the girls their new dress. This is elementary and obvious.

Knowing that, why would we say Wal-mart had their tires on sale? Wal-mart is singular. There may be a million people employed at Wal-mart, but Wal-mart itself is singular, so the statement should be Wal-mart had its tires on sale. Although the antecedent in the first example was a pronoun, and in this one it’s a noun, the same rule applies.

I’m forever seeing or hearing statements like “the team had their first game last Saturday” or “everybody brought their” own drinks to the party. These statements still fall under the same rule about antecedents. Team and everybody are both singular, so the pronouns to which they refer must also be singular: “the team had its first game” and “everybody brought his own drinks.”

I expect Gloria Steinham may have had something to do with the confusion over this last statement. Apparently she and some of her devotees don’t realize that “he” can be a generic term including both sexes, just as “man” can refer generically to both. Let’s not suspend the rules of grammar just because we don’t want women referred to as “he.” If you can’t stand to use the generic, say “everybody brought his or her own drink.”

Remember, anytime you use a pronoun as a predicate nominative or to modify a direct object, you need to look back at the subject it relates to. Be sure the two refer to the same number and gender.

What grammatical misuse bothers you? What particular area of grammar would you like help with? I’d love to hear and help.

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Forensic Fridays Tagged: David N. Walker author, Editing tips, Grammar and usage, Grammar rules, grammar tips, writing tips

Faith or Religion

If you abide in Me and My word abides in you, then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

On Worshipful Wednesdays, we take a look at God’s word and His kingdom to see what we can learn about ourselves, Him and/or our relationships with Him.

In a crossword puzzle I worked the other day, one of the clues was “faith.” The puzzle word it was the clue for was “religion.” To some, my reaction to this may seem a bit OCD or nitpicky, but I can’t help it. It angered me.

Not surprisingly, Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary renders similar definitions of the words “faith” and “religion.” I say not surprisingly, because it is a secular reference source, compiled by academicians for the use of the world in general.

For Christian definitions, I turned to The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, a work by Merrill F. Unger, a Christian scholar, with the help of numerous other Christian scholars. Here, the definitions were quite divergent.

“Religion” is defined by Unger’s as “to bind back, thus representing religion as the ground of obligation. The word thus translated in the New Testament, where it occurs but three times, is threskeia, and it means outward religious service.”

“Faith,” on the other hand, is defined by this source as “belief or trust, especially in a higher power.” It goes on to say “the word is used in scripture most frequently in a subjective sense, denoting a moral or spiritual quality of individuals, by virtue of which men are held in relations of confidence in God and fidelity to Him. . . .”

Do you see the difference here? Religion is seen as an outward thing, not an inner quality. Most Evangelical Christians would say that religion is man’s attempt to appease or pacify God.

Faith, however, is an inner quality. Evangelical Christians frequently define it as the evidence of things unseen or hoped for. We see our relationship with Him not as an attempt on our part to appease or pacify God, but as one resulting from His seeking us out. Faith then becomes that quality which solidifies our belief that He is the one who initiated the relationship, not we.

We don’t see God as some horribly powerful but capricious being waiting to zap us if we fail to appease Him, but as a benevolent and loving being who wants to bring us into relationship with Him and who sent His Son to make that relationship possible.

Every religion I know of sees itself as an attempt to pacify or please God. Christianity alone represents a God who reaches out to lift up His people into a proper relationship with Him.

You may say I’m splitting hairs if you want to, but to me there’s a gulf as wide as an ocean between faith and religion.

How do you define these two words? What meaning does their difference make in your own life and that of your family? I’d love to hear your comments.

Have a New Testament passage or concept you’d like to see discussed here? Maybe something you’ve never quite understood. I’d love to hear from you about that, too. I’ll try my best to explain it.

For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Worshipful Wednesdays Tagged: Christian, David N. Walker author, God's Word, Godly Wisdom, Inspirational stories

Karaoke Superstar

We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

On Miscellaneous Mondays, we talk about whatever happens to pop into my head—or any suggestion you may have made for a topic. Today’s post is a bit longish, but I hope you’ll bear with me.

As I was editing my “About” page the other day, I decided to mention how much my wife and I enjoy cruising. While I was at it, I mentioned that I won the ship’s karaoke contest on our last cruise, and I was going to link to the blog I thought I had posted about it sometime in the past. In a major “DUH” moment, I came to realize I’d never written that post. Well, for what it’s worth, here it is:

As a young boy, I sang with the predecessor of the Texas Boys Choir for three years. When my voice changed, I sang in a couple of operas, and through the years I’ve sung solos in several churches. But perform on a stage as a single act? Nope.

Well, actually, I did once. In junior high school, I tried out for a talent show. All the other kids who tried out either played an instrument or had friends accompanying them on instruments. I didn’t play anything, nor did I have a close friend who did, so I sang Buddy Holly’s “Party Doll” a capella. Talk about a lead balloon. My entire singing career died that night.

Where was karaoke back in the 1950’s when I needed it? Hadn’t been invented yet, leaving me to perform in front of my car mirror and my showerhead. They never booed.

For some reason, I’ve been slow to adopt the idea of karaoke. My first exposure to it came in 2001. As a part of a skit at my high school class’s 40th reunion, I dressed in a white Elvis suit (believe it or not, back in high school, I looked a lot like him) and sang “Treat Me Like a Fool.” Although I was well received, I attributed it to the silliness of the skit. Besides, I was very nervous, since I’d never even seen a karaoke screen before.

A while back, the Activities Director of the retirement home where my mother lived started a monthly karaoke night. When I heard about it, I decided to join the fun. Good decision. A group of old folks who can barely hear anyway is a very forgiving audience. They always cheered me, and over time I began to get comfortable with the mike and the spotlight.

The Zaandam, the ship on which my wife Sharon and I cruised to Hawaii, had several karaoke nights, so I decided to participate. Then they had what they called the Zaandam Superstar Contest. Using the format from American Idol, they had each of us sing one song, which a panel of four judges then critiqued.

For the semi-finals, I wasn’t too worried about most of my competition. Everyone had a good time, but half of them couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. Mario was the only one whose voice I thought might be hard to beat. He sang “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” and did it very well, but his stage presence was a bit stiff.

Then a lovely young lady named Mariana got up. She arrived a few minutes late, because she’d participated in an earlier event called The Pub Crawl. She felt no pain, nor did a couple of dozen other pub-crawlers who came in with her. Their cheers raised the roof when she got up to sing, and audience reaction is one of the things they judged on.

Mariana moved around the stage like a seasoned pro, pointing at various men with her index finger and generally evoking support. While not wonderful, her voice was good. I knew she’d be hard to beat.

Only one of the judges, a young lady named Natalie, was a professional musician. The others were the Cruise Director, the Purser and a volunteer from the audience. I decided to pay particular attention to Natalie in hopes she’d influence the others.

I sang “I Fall to Pieces.” It’s an easy song I’m comfortable doing. Since I’m familiar with the words, I only needed to glance at the karaoke screen once in a while. The rest of the time, I roamed and picked out various women at random to sing to.

Our stage was the dance floor of one of the ship’s nightclubs, leaving my back always to some part of the crowd. In order to sing to people behind me, I had to turn my back on the judges, but I decided it was a risk worth taking.

As I finished, I knew I’d sung the song well. I’d felt comfortable on the stage, but I didn’t know how the audience and the judges would receive me. The ovation let me know I’d done okay with the audience. No wild cheers like Mariana, but an enthusiastic ovation.

Natalie, the one pro on the panel, made my heart beat a little steadier when she gave me tops marks in all categories. The two men gave me good feedback also.

That left Lizabeth, our Cruise Director. She complimented my singing, but she told me I’d sung to every woman in the place except her. Not exactly true, but I hadn’t zeroed in on her.

In announcing four of our names as finalists, they called mine second, but they pointed out that they were listing us in no particular order. As I figured, Mario and Mariana both made it, but I was surprised to hear Theresa’s name included. Nice lady, but a weak voice. I think they liked her dancing and her looks.

The Finalists

They announced the finals would be held in the ship’s theater—a much larger venue—on our last day at sea. As we gathered, I saw the others had all dressed up. Mario wore a dress shirt and tie and shiny shoes. Theresa wore a nice pants suit with a knee-length duster. Mariana had somehow poured herself into a beautiful matador suit that emphasized her Hispanic features and showed off her figure very well. I almost wanted to vote for her myself.

This time Lizabeth and Natalie were both judges again, along with a Hawaiian guy who had presented several informational programs on the cruise. A lady selected from the audience joined them.

One of the judges commented on how good Mario looked and complimented him for dressing up for the occasion. After a halting start, he did a good job of “Cuando Cuando,” but his stage presence appeared a bit stiff once again.

Theresa went next. For not having a really good voice, she did a good job, and her stage presence was better than in the semi-finals.

I began to wonder if I was up to this when Mariana took the stage—and I do mean she took it. It belonged to her as she moved around pointing to one man after another. If she’d had a little better voice, I might have given up.

They’d had us pick a fast song and a slow one, and then they arbitrarily selected one of the two for us to sing. I didn’t know “Luckenbach Texas,” my fast song, nearly as well as “For the Good Times,” so I felt very fortunate when I heard the latter announced.

As I walked up onto the stage, I knew I had to do something to offset the advantages of the others. Mariana was nearly 40 years younger than I—not to mention beautiful. Mario and Theresa were both ten or fifteen years younger and much better dressed. What could I do?

I knew Matt, the emcee, would ask me a question or two before starting the music, so when I got the microphone, I ignored him and addressed the audience. “How would you like to be 1500 miles from home with nothing to wear but tennis shoes, jeans and a knit shirt and have to compete against all that?” I pointed to the other three, sitting together at one side.

I knew the question carried a risk. I could come across as whiny and making lame excuses, or I could get the audience on my side. I felt like I’d succeeded in swaying them, since they laughed at that and applauded several times during the song.

As with “I Fall to Pieces,” I knew my words and cues well enough to ignore the karaoke screen almost entirely and concentrate on the audience. The first person I directed attention to was Natalie—still the musician of the bunch.

Me Singing to Lizabeth

After singling out several women in the first few rows, I returned to the judges. This time I walked over to stand directly in front of Lizabeth, and when I held out my hand, she took it. Likewise the lady from the audience.

When I returned to center stage, Matt ran over holding out his hand, so I took it for a brief moment, too. Then I went back to directing myself to individual women in the crowd.

I figured I was in pretty good shape when I got to the chorus the second time through. As I sang, “Lay your head upon my pillow . . .” Lizabeth rose from her chair and ran over and leaned her head against me.

From the ovation when I finished, I felt like everyone in the place was with me—and Mariana didn’t have her cheering drunks this time.

All three women gave me excellent reviews. That left the Hawaiian man. I had no clue what to expect from him. He had told Theresa he liked her stage presence and her dancing, but he also told her not to give up her day job. I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard him tell me to give up my day job and do this professionally.

Despite being underdressed and overaged, I won. Guess it’s true: old age and trickery beat youth and enthusiasm. Might not have been the Grand Ole Opry, but for that moment in time, I was designated as the Superstar.

Me Holding My Big, Impressive Prize

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For more information about David N. Walker, click the “About” tab above.

For more information about his books, click on “Books” above.

Contact him at dnwalkertx@gmail.com or tweet him at @davidnwalkertx.

Filed under: Miscellaneous Mondays Tagged: cruise ships, cruises, David N. Walker author, karaoke, Life, Life experience, Life lessons, Life truths, Life values, Personal development