I’ll never forget that cold blustery day in November of ’74. We were standing at the corner of 43rd and Lexington when all of sudden people started pointing. I heard some ancient fellow yell about the John Lennon of his time and wondered why he was talking about communists in America.
After the great Johnny Fitzgerald Kennedy had showed them commie bastards that they couldn’t park their missiles on the shores of some banana republic that was run by a washed up baseball player who couldn’t make the cut.
Anyhoo, I am standing there in the crowd when I see this fat, old man who is covering up his thinning hair with fedora, but the not the really cool Borsalino that the Hasids wore.
My older brother says to me, “Jackie Boy, there goes Frank Sinatra.”
I don’t know what came over me, but I couldn’t help myself. “Hey Sinatra. I hate your singing. The Yankees suck and if the president had any sense he’d bomb the crap out of Times Square.”
Sinatra looks at me with contempt and snarls, “you don’t know Dick kid.”
I look at him and say, “Don’t go name dropping with me. I don’t care if you know the president. Go bore Kissinger and Agnew with your music and please ask my parents to stop hurting my head with those god awful tunes you call songs.
Confession Time
If you haven’t figured it out, that was fiction. I was five years-old in ’74 and I don’t have any brothers, let alone older.
But are you really surprised that a guy who wrote about Johnny and June beating a dumb redneck attorney with a steak fork would come up with this.
No, wait, that piece about what happens to voyeurs wasn’t published here was it.
What you were supposed to see was the thing about how accidents and smartphones can change lives.
How many times do you see Cash, Degrasse Tyson and Sandberg share screen time in one post?
I’ll wager not that often.
****
So I am sitting here listening to Shiny Happy People thinking about how not one, but two family members are in the hospital tonight.
One planned, one unplanned and though we carry our best intentions and expectations forward there is a part of me that asks the eternal question of, “what if?”
If I was a more morose and morbid man I’d tell you about how my blood work wasn’t what I wanted to hear or see.
I’d say it is a few pizzas and cheeseburgers away from heart attack land, shrug my shoulders and keep eating ‘cuz why not.
Except that is not me.
I looked at the results, shrugged my shoulders and reminded that Grim Reaper not to fuck with me because I will take the scythe from his hands and beat his bony ass.
And then just to be safe I went to the gym again and put another hour in.
Can’t hurt.
83,168 Ways To Cook A Feral Cat
You might have gathered that today held some challenges for me and that some of them raised my stress level a bit.
It is true, it did but it just pushed me to listen to James and prove a few people wrong.
Inside my head I pictured this cool dude doing his thing and knew that the sea was parting for me because cool people don’t get slammed into the rocks.
But my best guess is I looked like some goofy and awkward fool. I’d say like the nerd who knows the answer to final Jeopardy is Cuyahoga but loses because he pronounces it Coo-ee-hog-ah.
Some of you might laugh if that happened, some of you might say I deserve it for things I have said, but you wouldn’t get that satisfaction ‘cuz that mistake isn’t going to happen.
Know how I know?
Because the likelihood of that scenario playing out is more than a little limited and somewhere beyond the mountain range we call unlikely.
****
So I am sitting here thinking we need to do a new version of the clip below.
Except this time around it would be “help me Obi-Wan McDonald” and it would be about how to stop the Orange Mayor McCheese and his hamburglar army.
We would use the Force to stop the King of The Oompa-Loompas and his very angry press secretary from destroying the Republic.
Fortunately, I am not getting too old for this kind of thing and I have years to go before it ends…if ever.
Final Words
I had a conversation in which I was told I ask for the impossible and have crazy expectations.
They said I spend too much time in lollipop land and not enough in the real world. I shook my head and refused to agree.
“You have to accept what I am saying.”
“Nope. You can believe it. You can do as you choose, but not me. Don’t mistake my refusal to agree with a lack of understanding of reality. I see the walls, the chains and the locks. But I also see possibility and how it can lead to opportunity.
I believe what Yoda says and if that makes me a fool in some eyes, well I am a fool. Now pass the cat and a beer.” 🙂
