I am feeling more than a little feisty and not just because of what I wrote here or other things I have written elsewhere.
Man asks me about someone and I say I know love is still there because that kind of love don’t die.
“Maybe not, but how long can you wait?
“Who says I am waiting.”
“I do and I see how you are, you are on fire.”
“True and I am lighting people up all over. Told a few that tried to tell me it is wrong to call them ignorant because they are educated that I know some educated anti-vaxxers. A college degree doesn’t protect you from playing the fool.”
A thousand years ago when my teens were wee lads and lassies they asked if I would fight lions and tigers to protect them.
I nodded my head and said there wasn’t any creature I wouldn’t take on and then the older asked what he thought was a tough question.
“Would you punch a buffalo?”
“Hell yeah, he’d fall harder than the horse Mongo hit.”
He thought that was cool, even though he had no idea who Mongo was and how much bigger a buffalo is than a horse, but that was fine with me.
When the other party is a five-year-old there is not much gained trying to talk about size and weight differences between animals.
But silly men wonder if maybe they could generate the kind of power it would take to knock out a buffalo with their fist and mull over creating an equation that might help determine such a thing.
Then they wonder if they ought to be granted a mailed fist to protect their hand ‘cuz that buffalo has a head that might feel like hitting concrete.
And then they might wonder how that would impact the equation because it would add weight to the punch and that would change things.
Hell, both their dad and grandfather had told them that holding a role of quarters or even nickels in their fist would help do more damage, but that was a different time of life.
A time when there were no children because the man was the child…so very long ago.
And now we’re learning to walk again.
I’ll Make The Move
Sitting in a bar in Grapevine, beer on the table, smoke filled room alongside a couple of fraternity brothers laughing about the absurdities of life.
Thirty some years ago we sat on a patio overlooking a pool with girls in bikinis talking about a future that didn’t include the three of us in Texas.
Can’t say I remember exactly what we said it would be like, but this isn’t it.
The conversation pinballs from ideas about the present, thoughts about the past and some dreams about the future when I vociferously disagree with a few things.
It feels good to be able to do so knowing it won’t lead to name calling and hate. Feels good to look a them and to say they’re nuts and to hear it back knowing we can agree to disagree.
It is not necessary for us to be of uniform thought on any of this, but there are places where we do. Ideas that intersect and opinions that are open to compromise.
“People can say whatever the hell they want about me. I don’t care about most, but those whose voices count know I’ll make the move.
I am not afraid to take chances. Not bad for a guy who used to hate change.”
We nod our heads in agreement, move onto other less serious topics and then say our goodbyes.
When I get home I get interrogated about whether I smoked a cigar and shake my head.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep, didn’t have one, but people around me did.”
“Dad, you stink.”
“I stink like memories.”
An eye roll and head shake are all I get but that is ok with me. I wasn’t messing with the kids, I stink like memories of grandfathers.
The familiar scent brings them back from the grave for just a moment and it is comforting, been almost nine years since I last saw the one and 14 since I saw the other.
A lifetime has passed and though I am sure they would know me, I wonder how different I would appear to them.
I am almost middle aged now, closer to the end than the beginning, but still far enough away to fool myself.
Close my eyes, inhale deeply and remember knowing in a moment I’ll open them and return to the present to take of what must be handled so that the future is faced differently than if this moment was ignored.
