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Life, actually…

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RECEPTIONIST UNDER GLASS

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In the early afternoon chill of a winter day, I find myself wandering about the innards of a medical facility parking deck, attempting to locate safe passage to doctors’ offices.

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The dreaded adventure always begins with trying to figure out the vague and inexplicable signage that smugly tells me how to navigate the various numbered and sub-lettered levels of the deck. Smug because only the letterer, the sign creator, understands this coded language. Ordinary mortals learn to ignore the signs and just amble about till something resembling a destination pathway reveals itself.

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It is always advisable to allow an extra half-hour of ambling in order to make an appointment on time. On Time is important because if I’m tardy I may miss fruit cup. The schedule may have to be altered, thus inconveniencing me.

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I take a deep breath to waylay the impending irritation that is close to rearing its mocking head.

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OK. Be calm. Be of good cheer. Continue drifting about till somebody can offer directions in human language.

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Enough about wending. Let’s cut to the Waiting Room experience, assuming I finally made it to the desired destination.

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Within the gray walls of a large insulated-ceiling room, there sits a receptionist under glass. She is there as an exhibit symbolizing the dream of efficiency someone once had when this room was designed.

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“Good morning,” I enounce through four layers of dark facial mask. She returns my greeting with designer-mask-muffled smile…well, her eyes crinkle a bit at the outer edges, making me assume she is smiling. I guess she could be cringing.

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She clickety-clacks her keyboard and confirms my appointment, asks for a cashless co-pay, then directs me to sign in at a terminal resting atop a waist-high kiosk nearby.

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“I’ve no idea how to use that,” I mutter. The receptionist under glass no doubt expects this utterance from a patient of a certain age, and is eager to assist. This gives me the opportunity to see that she has an entire self outside of her gilded cage.

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She shows me how to insert my driver’s license into a slot right-side-up. It disappears and I have the strange notion that this is a shredding device. But the card pops back up, unscathed.

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Later, as I observe another patient operating the kiosk, I realize my shredder fantasy may not be fantasy after all. His credit card disappears and won’t return. The receptionist again exits her display case and works to retrieve the card. She fiddles with the machine and later admits that she should receive extra pay as an IT specialist. We share chuckles.

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Waiting is what one does in Waiting Rooms. While I await my fate, I wonder whether I should order a Big Mac at the kiosk screen.

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Don’t give up on me. A brain has to do something to fill time while waiting for the attentions of a doctor. Lusting after a Big Mac is as good as anything else an imagination could imagine. Don’t you think?

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Other elderly patients wrestle with the kiosks and either laugh or curse at the pretend logic of the system. “I hate these damn things,” one man gruffs.

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No time to hate this afternoon, I decide. Just observe the comedy and appreciate the honest reactions of the participants.

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Eventually, an emotionless employee shoves open the magic doctor door and loudly announces my name. I’m supposed to understand that her closed captions might read, “Good afternoon. Are you Mister Reed? Hi, my name is Sandra. I’m here to escort you to the doctor’s exam room. Just follow me.” Of course, none of that gets said. She just yells my name and prisses down the hall expecting me to tag along.

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It’s all comic. It’s all very human. It’s all just another few moments in the lives of those present who must obey the procedural system of just another medical facility resting near just another parking labyrinth

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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ONE WAY DOWN, THATAWAY

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Horace and I are free-falling down an elevator shaft, much to my horror, much to his delight.

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The time is many years ago when this Deep South town still has living elevator operators on duty in each tall building. Horace is the uniformed elevator man at the controls. I am the hapless businessman who makes the mistake of stepping aboard, wearing suit and tie and carrying briefcase.

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Horace and I are alone in the elevator, so for the moment he is in total charge of me and my smug universe. At least for the next fifteen stories down.

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Horace’s ritual is clear to me only later, when I’m trying to calm down, when I am counting my lucky stars.

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Earlier, the upward ride from first to fifteenth is smooth and gentle, as there are other passengers present. But right now, with no-one else aboard, Horace has a chance to play his game, the only game in which he for a few seconds has total control of his life. And mine.

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Horace nods a polite, obligatory nod and grasps the handled wheel as he closes the clanging doors.

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Staring expressionless straight ahead, he spins the wheel to what I can only assume is full throttle position, and the elevator begins its joy-ride drop.

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I back up against the wall and clutch my briefcase, gasp deeply and glance in panic at Horace, who is elegantly expressionless and artfully oblivious to my plight.

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The elevator descends as if in free fall, my stomach ascends as if compensating for the fall, I suddenly decide that this is definitely a structured game. I must play my part.

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Pretending to ignore my internal churnings, my last rites recitations, my roller coaster fears, I, too, become stoic and expressionless, lest Horace reduce me to a whimpering mass.

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Just before the feeling of certain death and transfiguration, the elevator magically screeches to a halt at the first floor. I try experiencing breathing again. I straighten my tie, hold my head up as if nothing unusual has occurred. Horace opens the doors and I wobble through them to the lobby, just as he says in his most gentlemanly and polite voice, “Watch your step.”

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And so I shall, so I shall.

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One thing I learn from this experience is that exercise is good for me. You know, at my tender age, walking down fifteen flights next time is probably going to be the right thing to do.

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Assuming I ever enter this particular building again

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

Hear this story as a podcast on youtube:

https://youtu.be/q53a9ThhZjk

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THE BUNGALOW OF ORPHANED DREAMS

This morning belongs to me.

The crystal-clear sunny sky and extremely chilly air are known only to me, just inside my head. Of course, I know that the morning belongs to everybody else, too. But I can only report what comes before me.

I drive west on First Avenue North and scan both sides of the road, as catch can. I scan as catch can while trying to keep my car in its assigned lane. But I can’t help being impressed by the gifts each roadside image provides.

For example, there’s a Victorian house feeling its age. It rests silently, the very picture of a bungalow of orphaned dreams. It rests silently, awaiting its fate. Its fate as a restoration. Its fate as a demolition. Its fate as a flip project. Its fate as a parking lot.

I drive on, trying to dis-remember that ignored home. I cannot ignore the fact that it is even older than I. I cannot ignore the fact that I, too, may be a fleshy container of orphaned dreams, lightly stirred with current life, shaken occasionally with intimations of mortality.

But what a beautiful house it still is. If I stop to stare, I can see evidence of a lovely, long life. I can imagine the joys and challenges to which this structure has been subjected for many decades. I can wonder about the lives that have come and gone over such a long period.

I drive past and onward to the morning’s westward destination. Now and then I look right and left for more signs of orphaned dreams

© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

Life, actually…

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LAST YEAR WAS THEN, THIS YEAR IS NOW

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Don’t know about your situation, but here in the Deep South the year is starting off muggy and stormy and overcast and misty with occasional bursts of blue sky crisscrossing chalky marshmallow clouds.

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Warm weather prevails, split wide with unpredictable days of cold and salt-shaker snow that seldom holds to the ground.

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Today is much like most of the New Year days I’ve wrestled during an over-extended lifetime.

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In other words, life is fairly normal Down Here. Toss in some illnesses and bruises and squabbles and internet skitishness and an epidemic of misinformed chatter…and what you have is still about as predictable as variant sunrise and slowmo thinking.

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I traverse the day and, like that long-ago dude Diogenes, I scan the horizon for some honesty and goodwill and non-fakery.

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Do I succeed? Yes I do—that’s because I have learned through infinite repetition of effort that I pretty much discover whatever I am looking for.

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Blinders and purposeful denial get me what I need most of the time.

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What have I noticed that will propel me through the New Year?

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I LEARNED THAT getting a smile out of some people is like trying to tap dance on shag carpeting.

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I LEARNED to avoid certain downer-type humans, the kind described by Harry Truman as about as helpful as a pitcher of warm spit. There is a place for such people, but that place is somewhere other than where I am, if I’m lucky.

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I also get along by NOTICING the unnoticeable.

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I NOTICE that the yellow Victorian house with the white picket fence rises   ’mid urban sprawl as if nothing around it has ever changed since 1906. That’s somehow comforting.

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I NOTICE the wild-haired woman who bursts into my shop with bags and baggies swirling about her.

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“You got a shirt?” she sputters, sans greeting and how-do-you-do’s.

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“You got a scarf I could wrap around my head?”

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She smells of talcum powder and confusion. She is frantic, her long black hair or wig becomes her halo. She is nervous and wants to scoop the contents of my ever-present basket of free lollipops into a bag.

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I am almost speechless, but I do have to protect the bookstore and its necessary commerce. I limit what she can remove unpaid but allow her to take something with her.

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As she rushes out of the shop, free candy and bandanna and bookmark in hand, she asks if she can have a free book. I shake my head and she disappears to the street, leaving behind momentary chaos and a heavy cloud of talcum.

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I NOTICE a lone survivor outside the store…a small scraggly leafy plant peeking out from between concrete slabs.

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As I pull closed the door, having waved away the powder, I again spot the everchanging weather…the clouds spin swiftly by, reflected in the large windows making up the storefronts across the avenue.

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Now I recall something Alex Haley once advised, “Find the good, and praise it.”

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Not a bad thought for the day. Alex Haley and Harry Truman and Diogenes accompany me back into the shop.

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I get busy trying to make other peoples’ day a bit more liveable

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© Jim Reed 2022 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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A WISH FOR THE YEAR UPCOMING

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Christmas Day just sped by and is now a fresh but gossamer memory.

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How does this happen? This annual celebration lasts a few hours, then flees, residing only in memory.

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Can Christmas—or at least the idea of Christmas—stay with me all year through?

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Is it possible to retain these feelings of concern and care and charity and generosity and love for more than a day?

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What is it about me the human? I know how to be kind, but I keep slipping up and reverting to…

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Well, I alternately display my best and my worst during any brief time period.

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Just when things are going smoothly, something worrisome pops up and destabilizes my best intentions. Momentary amnesia prevails.

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Then, just as glumness descends and locks itself in place, something delightful occurs, something fine and kindly that I never expected pokes its head around the corner and gifts me with laughter and hope.

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Sometimes the coaster slowly ascends, sometimes it suddenly drops into freefall and terrorizes me.

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What a life.

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Anyhow, today, acting as a member of this particular accidental species, I am hopeful and grateful and happy.

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If only I could find a way to capture hopefulness and gratitude and happiness and hold these feelings in a special place, then dispense them with generosity and empathy to you and to all others who have the same longings.

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If only

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© Jim Reed 2021 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THE ALMOST CHRISTMAS ANGEL

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HER STORY:

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I’m walking along the sidewalk near the St. Vincent’s Hospital parking deck and I just plain topple over something. I don’t know exactly what’s happening, but all of a sudden I’m flat on my back and my head is cut and hurting and my eyes are closed because I’m dizzy. I keep squinting, and I’m afraid to look around because I don’t know whether I’m dead or dreaming, or what.

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I hear this deep voice saying, “Just lie still, you’re going to be all right.” I want to see who is talking, so I open up and everything looks dark red and I think maybe I’m blind.

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“I can’t see,” I say to the voice. I think maybe I really am dead.

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The deep voice says, “You will be fine. Just be calm. Just be calm.”

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I try to take a deep breath and hold on. I feel a warm hand touching my forehead and soothing me.

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It isn’t long before I wake up in the emergency room and learn that I really will be all right. The nurses have cleaned the blood out of my eyes and I’m just fine.

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I’ll always wonder how my deep voice angel knew how to comfort me at just the right moment. I wonder if I’ll ever need him again.

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MY STORY:

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I’m walking along, near the St.Vincent’s Hospital emergency room near Christmastime, absentmindedly trailing behind a large woman who is in a hurry. Suddenly, she trips over a partially off-center manhole cover and falls flat to the ground, her head gushing blood. Her eyes are closed, and I lean over to see whether she’s conscious.

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She moves and squints, but the blood from her cut fills her eyes so that she probably can’t see. I don’t want to cause further damage, so I figure the best thing to do is stick by her till somebody comes from the emergency room.

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I sit down beside her so that she will know that she’s not alone out here. I lean close to her ear and quietly speak so that she won’t be startled. “Just lie still, you’re going to be all right.”

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She turns toward me and says, “I can’t see.”

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All I can think to do is reassure her whether or not I know she’s going to be fine. “You will be fine. Just be calm. Just be calm.”

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She responds and seems calmer.

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I recall the comforting healing power of my father’s large hand when he touched my forehead so many years ago, hovering over my sickbed and worrying.

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I reach over and my hand becomes my father’s hand and warmly touches her forehead.

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She lies quietly, almost smiling.

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Within minutes two casually-moving ER employees show up with a wheelchair and escort the woman away. Even though her eyes are still closed, I feel she’s going to be taken care of.

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I walk toward my car and go about my life.

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And I often wonder what this unknown woman thinks about when she remembers her Christmas blindness near a hospital parking deck.

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Does she wonder who I was?

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Does she know that I gave the only Christmas gift I knew how to give

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© Jim Reed 2021 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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THE CRAYON EPIPHANY

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It is dark as night in the middle of the morning in my small bunk-bedroom, just seven or so decades ago.

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I am only a few years old, sitting here on the hardwood floor, scrounging about for a battered old cigar box. It is dark because my eyes are closed.

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My eyes are closed because I am reaching as far as I can into the depths of a closet. I am afraid of what might be lurking there, so I depend upon touch and denial to survive.

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Touch because I’ll know when my hand touches the box that my quest will succeed. Denial because if I don’t see the closet monsters they won’t exist.

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This kind of operative logic keeps me going, though I’ll never tell anyone about it. Don’t want to be laughed at.

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There! I find the Hav-a-Tampa cigar box and drag it forth into the light, my eyes finally re-opened. It smells of old cigars smoked to the nub by my grandfather. The box is saved for re-use by little kids like me.

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I flip the partially-attached top open and wiggle my fingers around various collected objects trying to find enough used crayons to apply to a brand-new five-cent Robinson Crusoe coloring book.

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There is black, a peeled down inch of crayon that will last all summer.

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There is yellow, broken in two and ready to have its craggy tip smoothed down.

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And there is a blue, the only other crayon I can locate this morning if I don’t count the untouched white one. Untouched because what can you do with a white crayon, unless you have black crape paper?

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I stare at the waxy sticks. What can be accomplished with just four crayons and only two colors? Black isn’t really a color, according to older sister Barbara. And white is mostly invisible. So I’m stuck with yellow and blue.

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Would Robinson Crusoe approve of a yellow and blue island?

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I open the book, flatten it so that it won’t snap shut. I begin by coloring the seaside-sky blue, leaving gaps that will represent clouds.

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The beach will have to be yellow today, so I dig in, furiously coloring, and in the process violating the boundary between beach and sea. Suddenly, I have a third color!

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I never knew till this moment that blue and yellow combined produce green! Whattaya know?

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So…this means that the palm tree can be partially green. Its trunk can be lightly blackened—but maybe if I throw in a bit of yellow with the black it will look somewhat natural.

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And so on.

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Having conquered boundaries, I begin mixing colors, creating a kind of fairy tale land where skies are partially green, beaches are black and yellow, trees are blue, and Crusoe himself is a colorless creature standing within this faraway fantasy.

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I have discovered the magic and science of mixing things together to form new and more interesting things. I’m on a roll.

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From now on, I will be experimenting with all the worldly things around me. Twigs will become wands, caterpillars will be pets, blankets will become tents, blue and yellow will become green…

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Life is a burst of good fun right now. Just fun enough for me to forget the closet monsters and ignore the admonitions of teachers who will not approve of blue trees and imaginative little boys

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 © Jim Reed 2021 A.D.

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Catch Jim’s podcast of this story:  https://youtu.be/ADQy4fMr6ZY

Or read it, below:

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Life, actually…

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O BRAVEST OF BRAVE NEW WORLDS 

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OR THE VIRTUAL MIRROR-COMPUTER-TEXTING-GAZE OF THE LONG-LOST SOULS

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FOND MEMORIES SPRING TO LIFE AT THIS BOOKSHOP

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Life, actually…

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WHERE DO JOHN WAYNE’S MATCHES GO?

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Hitching up pants and tucking in shirt, I am exiting the downtown movie theater of childhood in this Deep South village.

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Bright sunlight reminds me that it is only nighttime inside this film palace. Outside, atop the concrete sidewalk, real life blindingly resumes.

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Even though I am just a kid, I strut slowly and deliberately, eyes darting back and forth, down and up, searching for signs of lurking danger. My hands at my sides prepare to do imaginary quick-draws should fate decree.

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This is way more years ago than you can count. In fact, this is way more years ago than I dare to count, since I have lived way longer than the gods must have intended.

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Watching cowboy heroes on the big screen for two hours transforms me for a few minutes. For just a little while, I amble like a gunslinger. I pick popcorn bits from my teeth, using a wooden toothpick dispensed at the concession stand.

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I return to daily doin’s slowly, enjoying the fantasy of living in a world more action-packed than my own. A world without school teachers and parents and Sunday school instructors hovering about.

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I return to reality with enthusiastic reluctance.

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Living as I do, inside this fond memory, one tennis-shod foot in the past, the other in the present, I fortify myself against the encroachment of reality. But being a creature of mythology and science at the same time, I can’t help wondering about those cowboy heroes.

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For instance, when Roy Rogers dips his head to duck an incoming bullet, my curiosity is tweaked. Can Roy actually see the bullet coming, judge its trajectory, and move aside just in time to stay alive? When I am older, maybe I can study this puzzle with more experience and maturity.

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Another thing: every time John Wayne lights up a stogie during an intense dialogue, how come the wooden match is simply tossed aside out of silver screen range? Where does it go? Even in indoor settings, John Wayne continues to drop extinguished matches, rather than looking for an ashtray.

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My mom would never approve of this behavior.

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And if I dare try to discard my used toothpick at home, using John Wayne’s technique, how much trouble and fury would ensue?

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Maybe that’s why John Wayne and Roy Rogers are so special. They know how to get away with dodging bullets and littering without shame or punishment. I still haven’t learned how to do these simple but mysterious things. I guess I don’t need to.

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Later, it’s bedtime and I lay me down to lie awake.

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While I await drowsiness and slumber, I have a fading s’more memory or two. I dream of heroes and their impossible behaviors, moms and their guiding nurture, old movie theaters with their daytime nights and nighttime daylights, salty popcorn kernels, discarded stogies and toothpicks…

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I have just the right amount of fond memory to get me through till sunrise waves at me through the open screened window next to my bunk bed

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Jim Reed © 2021 A.D.

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