A man looks back across 17 years of life and hears an ancient echo say “you don’t sound like a Texan followed by a question that sounds like do you know Jack.”
The almost middle aged stares at the moon and hears another voice say “when you are thinking of me, I am thinking of you” but before he can confirm what he hears isn’t obscured by the fog of time over memory a new wave crashes in.
There are 983 emails in his inbox and the dinging of the notification bells makes him crazy because twenty minutes ago there were no emails.
That dude had cleared the box of all pressing matters, handled and filed.
And now handled and filed didn’t mean a damn thing because the tsunami of crap to deal with was threatening to drown him.
He looked at the inbox, thought about the not quite birthday wishes and sighed because he knew he wasn’t going to ignore or walk away from this crap…not this time.
Just A Freight Train Comin’ Your Way
There is a common scene in a ton of action movies where someone is getting a beating and they are told to just “stay down.”
Sometimes the person gets back up and ends up getting knocked out and sometimes they knock out the person or persons beating upon them.
I thought about that in a general sense today.
Maybe it is because my son joined my gym and I am fighting to keep up with him on some of the machines. He isn’t taunting me, hasn’t said a word about how he can jump on and just go but I can’t.
Hasn’t pointed it out in any shape or fashion but damn if I am not hyper aware of it.
Midway through my third beat down I looked at the kid and growled something barely intelligible.
He raised an eyebrow and and asked me what I said and I said remember Willie taught Toby and muttered something about a drink.
“No beer dad.”
Toast Me Later
He has no interest in beer, took a sip of mine 1,969 years ago and told me he hated it. Hasn’t ever wanted to try it since.
“Toast me late sonny boy.”
He shook his head at me and I walked over to the lat pull and set it up for 210 pounds. Pulled it once as a pull up and then a second time as a pull up.
“JW, you are an old fool. Feel better. Move to lighter weights, higher reps.”
It was my voice speaking to me, but it didn’t receive a response…just silence.
“That is what you’ll get from dad this week, going to have to live with that or go digging in the archives for a loud rendition of Happy Birthday that sometimes would make you wish he would sing faster.”
Again the voice was met with silence and a reminder that sometimes you can stand in the middle of a crowd and be lonely.
*****
We’re two episodes away from the conclusion of Game of Thrones and I have thought about how it would be nice to talk to the old man about what we have learned.
He’d tell me how he read some criticism of the show not having enough magic and tell me those idiots don’t understand it,
I would nod my head and say they missed the forest for the trees.
Not so long ago I told him that a few people had told me they refused to watch it because they didn’t like action and only wanted drama.
“Dad, I don’t think they believed me when I said this is a show about people, love and drama. I think they thought I was kidding when I said there is a love story or two tied up in it. their loss.”
I don’t remember what we talked about after that, probably nothing important but it is the nothing important stuff that becomes important.
Told my 18 year-old that I want him to remember to take voting seriously and to not ignore it just because some people say it doesn’t make a difference.
Talked about how the local elections can be as important or more important than the bigger ones.
Told him to remember sometimes a girl can offer all sorts of interesting insight into our lives and to have enough courage to go after the lives we fear to live.
“Dad, just because someone said you don’t look 50 doesn’t mean you have to act like it.”
I smiled and told him to pay attention, “watch me and you’ll learn what 50 is and isn’t.”
