There is a video of the The Osmonds doing a Fiddler on The Roof medley that is like a train wreck that catches my eye and causes my ears to bleed because it is not quite right.
Is that my lead in for saying I would be even better than the tailor Mottel Kamzoil?
You’re damn right it is and I wouldn’t have to pull a Frume Sarah coming from beyond the grave to make you sing wonder of wonders either.
Though I must admit I have tried writing a few things here and there just to try my hand at it.
Turned on the boys and listened to one of my favorites and wondered if I am going to be visited in my dreams tonight because I have a feeling.
Can’t decide if I see something out of the corner of my eye or if I feel someone or something thinking about me or looking in my direction, but I know it is something.
They once asked me if I had contempt for them and I did my best impression of Humphrey Bogart playing Rick in Casablanca and said “if I paid any attention to you, than yes I would.”
It went over better than the time I told someone there was no way we would ever get married. I suppose I ought to admit it lacked tact and was harsh and perhaps say it was because I was 20.
That is a true story. I said those very words and I was 20 which doesn’t excuse the lack of tact but does provide a framework for my saying I had no interest in getting married.
It was something I thought could happen…one day…many, many years in the future.
But at 20, that wasn’t something that held particular interest and given I knew a few guys who had managed to become fathers before they intended I was even less interested in anything that would tie me down.
Fast forward to the future and conversations with my own son who assures me he has no interest in marriage and sees no time for becoming a father ever.
My daughter says not to worry, she’ll make sure I am a grandfather one day provided she finds the right guy as long as it is after medical school.
I nod my head and tell that sounds like an excellent idea and she tells me not to day dream about beating up a boyfriend who doesn’t exist.
“It is not a day dream. If he makes the wrong face I’ll help him tie his shoes at the top of the staircase.”
She frowns and asks me if I remember what it was like to be younger and wonders if the fathers of the girls I dated wanted to help me too.
“At 20 I could have bench pressed them all and then defenestrated them. They wouldn’t have wanted to mess with me.”
Daughter rolls her eyes at me and I think back and verify that I could have done exactly as I say but acknowledge some of those men might have reacted very poorly if they had come across us.
Angry father sometimes get super strength so maybe I am lucky not to have anything but stories of what could have been.
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I keep looking at the pictures of our galaxy and think about traveling somewhere dark so that I can stare at a night sky filled with more twinkling lights than can be counted.
I don’t understand people who can’t appreciate the night sky or get lost in it. I don’t understand people who don’t take time to think about the universe and our place in it.
They don’t have to be religious or come to any conclusions about faith, that is not the point.
What I have trouble following is how you can’t consider how it all fits, from the big bang to the present. How you don’t spend any time thinking about science and how things work or question life.
If you can’t try and find the magic, the mystery and the majesty and accept it all while picking it apart than I don’t follow you.
Because part of the joy in life is asking questions and trying to understand while accepting you never will and figuring out how to reconcile it all.
There is joy in turning off your brain and just being and there is joy in figuring out to assemble the puzzle pieces and move them around in ways that have impact and meaning.
