If you want to stay humble be sure to get a teenage daughter and she’ll help you remember you are not as cool as you think or hope to be.
Of course if you set the bar low enough none of it really matters and so you are not impacted by much.
“Dad, every time you do pull ups like that your shirt goes up and you don’t have a six pack anymore.”
If you happen to be a 50 year-old Taurus who is called JD by some you smile because dear daughter didn’t want to admit that you once had the kind of belly girls liked to stare at and now you just don’t care period.
If you flex hard enough you can see the cuts and you have been grudgingly told by others they can too.
Except if you don’t flex no one can see them and you look like you have the dad bod but maybe not in a good way, or maybe in the best way.
That is the thing, you just don’t care that much and every time you think about giving up all the carbs and going to a ridiculously low calorie diet to get that back you wonder why.
Sure, it would be cool to have again and fun to say you do, but is it really worth the aggravation?
****
Facebook encourages me to look back at memories from years past and I see comments from people I once was Facebook friends with but no longer am.
Sometimes I look and know immediately that I unfriended them or they unfriended me and other times I can’t remember.
Got another two miles to put in on the elliptical so I go down the silly rabbit hole of trying to remember who I was connected with because in the early days of Facebook we seemed to connect with anyone we once knew with little regard for whether we cared to be connected.
Some faces float by and I know we were definitely connected but aren’t anymore and wonder if I ought to care that I can’t remember why we aren’t.
Is it a sign of life in an electronic bubble that leaves me unclear or a reality check that says if they were important I’d know.
A girl once asked me to share something no one knew about me and I said I am impatient in life and love.
She said that wasn’t a secret and asked me if I ever held still.
“Sometimes I do. Mom says I was so busy as a little kid that when she went to give birth to my middle sister she got nervous that it would be too hard because I didn’t stop.”
I flashed my best smile and the girl said you know I can’t say no to you. I snorted and said that was temporary and that I was sure she’d learn how,
Later she’d tell me I got to be very good at pretending not to hear it and or trying to convince her no to be yes.
And that was in the time that was when circumstances were complicated but still less complex than they would become with the punch line to the joke being neither of us knew we how simple they would be compared to later.
Call it the joy of aging and experience. You look back upon your life and think about what you once believed was of major importance and exceptionally difficult and realize you’d go back because what you saw as hard was easy.
Maybe this is why you end up with songs like Ray LaMontagne’s I Still Care For You or Richard Harris singing Jimmy Webb’s Macarthur Park.
It is funny to me how the boy I once was would have called these songs elevator music and rolled his eyes and now the slightly older version hears layers and sees visions.
In theory this could be a good lead in to Funeral For A Friend but my overactive mind has already leapt forward and I am thinking about a dozen other things.
****
Wore all black to work and did the Johnny Cash thing for a chunk of the day, walking around writing songs to June and telling stories about the time I didn’t serve in prison.
Had someone ask me if I knew anything about “The Spy” on Netflix, smiled and told them I did.
Shared a very brief story about my time in Israel, some stories about the Golan Heights and of course Eli Cohen’s brilliant idea for Eucalyptus Trees.
And then my phone buzzed and I saw a fool on Facebook had responded to me and wondered if I should block him.
He had already pumped out some of the most profoundly dumb remarks I have seen and tried to refute facts from the website he had linked to.
It was almost comical.
He posts something I find questionable. I ask a question or two and he tells me I am wrong. I am not convinced so I look at the link he provided and find that my memory is correct.
Point out said information and then shake my head while he tries to say the information is wrong but the site is correct.
This interaction is stupid and I want to friend him so I can unfriend him and then bleach my eyes and conduct an exorcism.
Got a 10:45 in Roanoke and a 2:15 in Plano.
This is not the way organize your day because it requires too much windshield time and doesn’t allow much room for the interim activities.
But the lessons learned from the parents and elders is this must be done because the strength of the pup sometimes lies in the strength of the pack.
And when the pup struggles one must find ways to help, prod, push, cajole, command and encourage.
So on the way out of the gym when the teenage girl asks why I must stop and see if I can swing that heavier weight it is not because I need others to hear, see or witness.
It is because I must show myself that upon need I can still go there and that I still have it within me to do so.
So I did and I do.
No Ibuprofen needed or six pack required.
Sometimes dad is immune to eyerolls…just ask. 😉
