SANTA GOES POSTAL…ER, NOT QUITE

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 As I age and turn portly, I seem to look more like Santa Claus each day. Even little kids sometimes look up at me and say with awe, “Are you Santa Claus?”  I answer in various ways, depending upon mood and situation: “No, I’m not Santa, but I know Santa very well.” If the child is interested, I go further, “And right now, I’m making a list and checking it twice,” as I pull out sticky notes and pen.

It’s fun to chat with kids and to see the light in their eyes when they are enjoying our interactions.

The Ol’ Saint Nick mood is my favorite mood, and on my good days I try hard to hold on to it. I’ve found, in my dotage, that I have to cheer myself up when there’s no-one else cheerful at hand.

So, this morning, on the way to the shop, I drop by the Homewood Post Office to post a couple of books to customers far away.

As I enter the building, sporting my best Santa goodwill grin, I check with one woman to see if she’s already ahead of me in line. She smilingly insists I go ahead of her, as if to Santa, attention must be paid .

I walk up to the shorter of two clerks, an unfamiliar one who is wearing blue latex gloves and a deep frown, complete with zero eye contact. As always, in my best old-time announcer cheery voice, I say, “Good morning!” She mumbles. I hand her two small packages and, as I invariably do, I say, “These are media mail, with tracking, please.” She asks the familiar post-9/11 postal questions about whether there is dangerous material in the packages and I say, no, just books.

Then, staring at the scales to the side of her–and still not looking up or at me–she grumpily says, “Now, is there written material or anything else inside?” I say, “Nope, just books–media mail,” I stress.  She says “Are you SURE?”

I’m taken aback but remind myself that today, I am Santa and nothing can dissolve my good cheer.

To reassure her, I say, “I know the rules–been doing this for forty years. Books are media mail.”

She says nothing, weighs the first book, then for some reason slides it across to my side of the counter. I automatically pick it up, thinking she’s handing it back to me. She reaches over and snatches it from me. I raise my eyebrows, grin, and say, “Sorry, I thought you were finished.” She snaps, “No, I’m not finished,” and slaps a self-adhesive label on the package.

The clerk then silently weighs and labels the second package.

I automatically get my Amex card out as I do several times a week at the post office and swipe it across the lighted terminal–prematurely. She says, “It’s not ready!” I say, “Oops!” Then I say, “Is it ready now?” She snaps yes, so I do a successful swipe, then as always–usually for grateful clerks who appreciate being able to view the security number themselves–hold the card up for her to see.

She looks at it and says, “Say the number.”

Suddenly, I am gravely aware that her strange attitude/hostility is not my imagination–I know now that I have an annoying–and annoyed–clerk on my hands. The other clerk, the one with whom I’m used to having pleasant transactions, pretends none of this is happening and says nothing. She seems somewhat fearful.

Without thinking, and because all other clerks for the last twenty years have expressed appreciation for my showing them the card itself close up, I say, “Sorry, I can’t read this (as if I need reading glasses).” My sullen clerk, looking at the line of bemused customers behind me, sighs and takes down the number I’m displaying, as if she’s lost some kind of contest. The charge goes through, she literally tosses the receipt at me and gets ready for the next customer.

I automatically say a cheerful, “Thanks,” even though I’m not sure why.

I turn to go and notice the wide-eyed looks of the witnesses behind me in line.

All I can say with a smile is, “Ah…the spirit of Christmas. Geez!”

I get a laugh.

I have succeeded in not going postal.

I leave peacefully, hoping to have better luck at tossing my good cheer around someplace else today–maybe at my sanctuary, the bookshop at the center of the Universe.

Hope you, too, get through the day without going postal. Come down to the store and we’ll share war stories or just enjoy the peaceful atmosphere of books well worth the time

© Jim Reed 2013 A.D.

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The attractive young customer brings her trio of old books to the counter where I stand half-hidden but ready to accept payment.

She’s purchasing 19th-century editions of Alfred Tennyson and Emily Dickinson and Robert Browning, three literary icons so famous that we’ll never appreciate them for who they actually were.

“Hmmm…Tennyson and Browning and Dickinson together!” I say, “I wonder what their dinner conversation together might be like?” I’m pondering aloud, to the delight of the customer. She smiles and wonders the same thing.

Then, the personalities of the three come to mind and I blurt out a thought, “I think what would happen is, Emily would excuse herself in mid-conversation on the pretense of going to the ladies’ room, then duck out and head for home.”

The young customer agrees. She accepts the packaged books and waves good-bye, perhaps continuing the fantasy of Emily and her two dates and what might have happened next in each of their lives.

My days are often like that. The irony of a bookstore is that authors are thrown together in oddly out-of-time, out-of-logic, outrageous ways, even before they arrive at check-out. Hemingway presses against Hesse, just down the row from Gellhorn…H.G. Wells stands near Virginia Woolf and embarrassingly close to his real-life mistress Rebecca West…Henry Miller is dangerously near Anais Nin, and Arthur Miller is right there near Marilyn Monroe.

Even more provocative is the fact that authors who would probably have disliked each others’ works are forcibly housed in proximity. Mickey Spillane razzes Rex Stout and mocks Georges Simenon…Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey cozy up but sneer at W.P. Kinsella and Alexander King and Charles Kingsley… Emily Bronte and Pearl Buck try hard to find common ground but fail.

Imagine the mutterings you might hear late at night should these authors’ books come alive and party once they know we’re out of earshot.

Another customer brings Mein Kampf and the New Testament and Bertrand Russell to the counter, and once again my mind runs wild. Jesus would definitely have to come between Adolf and Bertrand to break up the fight, don’t you think?

But wouldn’t you like to be an invisible witness during that conflagration?

Actually, truth be known, I suppose we readers actually are invisible witnesses…spies who listen in on unlikely conversations, chaotic encounters, entertaining and sometimes deadly confrontations.

That’s what reading is all about

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Help me find the sad and the glad this Thanksgiving.

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I’ve spent way too much of my life obeying rules that don’t exist.

Where in the world does this trait come from?

For instance, I used to think that it was against the law to remove new fabric tags from mattresses and pillows. But then I realized that nobody could tell me what law it is that forbids these removals, so now they are removed at will.

Way back when, I decided to go to a Halloween party dressed as a priest (frocked as a priest?), so I went to the priest boutique—the store that sells such things as clerical garb. I hesitated at the front door, suddenly imagining that someone inside might ask for my credentials, just to make sure I was qualified and didn’t break the priest-only rules. Of course, the clerks didn’t even look me in the eye, and I walked out having purchased a collarless invisible-buttoned black shirt with the little white plastic doodad that turns you into a man of the cloth.

Once, when I realized that Whopper Juniors at Burger King looked more appetizing than their bloated  ”adult” burgers, I started to order one, then hesitated, thinking, “Oh, no, they’ll ask me if I’m young enough to order a Whopper Junior. I’ll be busted for breaking the kidburger rules.” Naturally, I passed that hurdle. Burger King folks could not care less who orders what, so long as it is paid for.

When I was a kid, movie theaters sold admissions and didn’t keep score. You could sit and watch a film as many times as you pleased, since owners were used to being daycare centers for adults and kids—much as libraries have assumed that role these days. In middle age, I watched a movie in Homewood and decided to stay to see the opening scene again. An usher calmly reminded me that the rules were different now—nowadays you have to buy a ticket for each and every showing. Slightly embarrassing to say the least.

Why do I make up rules, and why do I not know the real rules?

Many business establishments have double-door entrances. Why double doors, since there is always one door locked? It’s a contest to see which door is the locked one. I’m correct 50% of the time. What are double doors for, anyhow? The only other two-door entrances that come to mind are those swinging saloon doors, both of which always work in the movies. Cowboy movies have door rules that are different from real life door rules.

Why?

And why is it that I’m the only person around who follows the rule about opening the door for people, as a courtesy? Folks used to thank me profusely, but these days they don’t even notice that I’m doing it—they are in texting land or cellphone world and apparently think that doors just follow the law of Moses, the one about magically parting the doorway so that you don’t have to break pace.

Speaking of westerns, wouldn’t it be fun to watch two gunmen doing a fast-draw shoot-out while tweeting or texting? Results would be inconclusive, I suppose. Those guys followed rules, too—don’t draw until the count of three. Who made that one up? Being a born chicken, I would shoot, then count to three.

Staying confused about the rules of day to day living is entertaining though annoying. It’s something to whine about, but you should be grateful that I’m not pestering you about really big, serious problems. Social media allow you to mouth off about things of no importance to anyone else, and get away with it. I suppose we should be thankful for big favors

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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AARP? ARRGHH!

I have tried for many decades to figure out why people retire.

Yep, for years I thought to myself intermittently, “Why would anybody want to retire?”

I equated retirement with indolence, with bored married couples dining at the local cafeteria each night, night after night. And rarely speaking a word to each other.

Retirement meant watching too much TV and grimacing all the while, taking the garbage out a bit too often, and becoming obsessed with small patches of grass that must be trimmed at all cost. I felt that retirement would mean the end of all meaningful brain activity. Ossification would set in and I would find myself slowly becoming something horrible, like a far-right-winger or a Neighborhood Watch captain, walking around the neighborhood in khaki shorts and flip-flops and giving neighbors with noisy dogs the evil eye.

I figured I would wind up watching the ‘hood all the time, waiting for something to complain about, gazing much too much at the Weather Channel and announcing loudly to all who would eventually not listen, the latest weather possibilities, “They say we might get snow next week!”

I pictured retired people as people who had given up the good fight, stopped believing they could change the world, resigned themselves to spending way too much time spoiling grand kids and in so doing, irritating the parents of grand kids. I vowed I would never join AARP. I said I would never wear a bad toupee or say, “The kids these days!”

I even pictured retirees as people who not only had stopped making love but who had ceased even having sex.

My biggest fear was that I would be treated the same way I had inadvertently treated older people much of my younger life. That pudgy little woman with the cane could not have anything interesting to talk about. She had never been young and beautiful and full of dreamy dreams. That comb-over guy wearing the 30-year-old sports jacket had not had
anything new or interesting to say since he bought that sport coat. Those folks who needed assistance in getting over the obstacles we all placed in their way—stairs, curbs, restaurant menus with small print, poorly lit movie aisles—those folks just got in the way sometimes.

I would never be like them! I would take care of myself and make sure I did not get bald or dumpy or out of shape.

Well, you know the end of this story, and you know, in the recesses of your mind, that you will reach the end of this story just like I have.

I have become a Senior Citizen, and if you are lucky (?), you will, too.

Now, I can accept all the hilarious little bad jokes that nature has played on me, my mind, and my body. What I have not been able to adjust to, until recently, is the giving up of projects that might have changed the world.

I have learned that you can do wonderful things as a volunteer, but I have also learned that it is difficult to get other volunteers to do things your way. My rant about this is oft-repeated:

“Volunteers! You cannot discipline them. You cannot make them do anything. But once in a while, they will decide to do something good and you will have to remember to be grateful for what they do. You also have to remember to thank them.”

This should be displayed on plaques in every volunteer organization in the country.

I have learned that I no longer have to strut or try to look younger than I am, because it is perfectly obvious to everybody that I have achieved geezer status. Some of that is kind of nice. True, most younger people look right through me, as if I could not possibly be important to their lives. But some of them, a few, actually realize that I do know stuff and can help them think through things. Those who take the time seem delighted with my company, and I draw hope and ideas and energy from being with them. Something else: I no longer shun older people, because I know  that, to them, I am the younger person and can learn something from their added weathering. In turn, they seem to get a kick out of my attentiveness.

So, I guess I have obtained some good from becoming elderly.

There are not too many advantages to getting on up there in years, but there are some nice perks:

1. I am no longer expected to lift heavy objects or fix things or help people move. I do not get dirty looks when I sit down before everybody else. I even feel un-self-conscious enough to quietly excuse myself and go read a book.

2. I can see things in cycles now—something you cannot do when you are young. When you are young and having an anxiety attack, you just know the world is coming to an end and that you will not last the day. But when you are my age and are having your 421st anxiety attack (yes, you will never stop having them!), you suddenly say to yourself, “Hey, I have survived 420 of these…click!…I think I just might survive this one, too!” Sometimes, a little relaxation aid like the indacloud delta 9 gummy can also help you stay calm and regain perspective during stressful moments.

3. When you are my age you are no longer suspected of having naughty thoughts, so this frees you up to have all the naughty thoughts you want, and not feel guilty about it.

4. As an S-word Citizen, I can enjoy the impatience and impertinence of younger drivers. It is fun to take my time and watch somebody else’s blood pressure go up for a change. The more that young whippersnapper honks his horn at me, the slower I am going to drive. And he will blame it on my age! Heh, heh, heh.

5. I can also pretend to forget stuff in order to get out of doing things I do not want to do. They think it is because my mind is going. Little do they know that my mind went a long time ago and I am just having fun now.

I am officially a happy old geezer. But I still do not understand why people retire

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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The early hint of pending sunrise stirs something within me and I open my eyes for a split second, just to see whether I’m really awake or just dreaming another neverending dream about waking up.

Looks like a new day is about to occur.

I turn over on my side and hug the pillow, wishing for one more minute of sweet sleep, wondering if it’s still nighttime or just dark and cloudy. What time must it be? Hmmm. I punch the tiny light on the bedside alarm clock and see that it’s already 7:21 a.m.—just about the exact time that I awaken every day.

Will today be different from yesterday? I squint and try to visualize my pocket calendar. What was I supposed to do on the way to work this morning? Maybe make a bank deposit, perhaps purchase a new supply of MoonPies for the shop, drop off the laundry…things like that.

I lie suspended, backtiming my schedule from 10:30 a.m. when the bookstore doors must open, to right now. Each chore will take a certain amount of time to accomplish. If I don’t dawdle, I should be able to get everything done by then, plus do all the rituals: shower, brush, dry, primp, dress, greet Liz, pack a lunchbag, take out the trash, jumpstart the station wagon.

All told, everything will take exactly enough time to fill the period between 7:21 and 10:30. It always does.

How does this work?

Well, it’s kind of like life, isn’t it? I receive the gift of 24 hours every 24 hours. It’s groundhog day every day, with variations.

If I always have 24 hours to use, how come I conjure up carloads of excuses for NOT having 24 hours? I hear myself and others saying, “I don’t have time to read anymore.” “I want to write but I just don’t have time.” “Someday, when I get the time, I want to learn to play chess.” “I ran out of time and didn’t get to it.” “Time flies.” “I need an extra hour in the day.” “Where does the time go?” And so on.

Sounds like I use this made-up construct, TIME, as my excuse for everything I don’t get done. It’s pretty handy, a universally applied technique for not fulfilling potential.

So, what is my point? By now, I should be saying something sage to clear up this tangled mess of thoughts, something you and I can take with us and ruminate over during the available 24 hours.

I guess I’m just chastising myself, reminding myself to stop making excuses for not having enough time. For every hour that I waste channel-surfing or facebooking or tweeting, I could be fulfilling my dream of writing the Great American Book page by page by page. For every hour I spend gossiping or idly chatting or taking up with people I’m supposed to take up with (as opposed to those I really WANT to take up with), I could be addressing the hundredfold procrastinated projects I know should be tackled. But my addiction to wasting chunks of 24 hours seems pervasive and difficult to lick.

So, what about that interval between 7:21 and 10:30? If I weren’t afraid to accomplish many things outside my comfort zone, I could do twice as much and make myself proud. For instance, I could stop for three minutes and write Liz a love note. I could pause and exchange pleasantries with the elderly man passing by the house. I could clean out the back seat of the wagon so that it didn’t have the appearance of a thrift store cart. I could lope around the block and work on reducing my Pillsbury Doughboy waistline.

Dream on.

It’s so comfortable to follow a routine each day, stretching it out in order not to face utilizing time wisely.

The only way I can make myself feel better about this situation is to make time-squandering my full-time vocation. I could tell folks that it is my profession, this stretching out of time, this meandering to avoid taking life head-on.

If I convince myself of this fabricated truth, then I can feel comfortable and satisfied that life is great and that I’m living the 7:21 dream to its fullest.

Time-squanderers of the world, unite and proceed! So far, we’re doing a great job

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Zen and the Art of Cringing at the Washee Quickee

It’s a beautiful, clear autumnal morning, a morning so bright with sunlight and particulate-free air that I can immediately spot one of the horrors of Fall…my filthy automobile.

Yep, the ol’ Sable is solid white, meaning that if I wear my contact lens and gaze objectively at the car’s metal surface, I come to realize that nobody else knows that this vehicle is white. Layers of grime and dust create a new color that is not only indescribable but probably unpatentable.

Every few years I treat myself to a Cleansing of the Station Wagon—about the same length of time it takes to rev up enough gumption to cross the street in front of my shop and get a shoe shine at the Goodyear Shoe Hospital.

So, I gird my courage and head for the Washee Quickee Car Wash, hoping that the scrawny, grouchy old man isn’t on duty like last time.

Jumpstarting my Time Machine I quickly adjust the year-o-meter and glide back to the experience of my last visit to Washee Quickee, which has been in business since the 1950′s. I can only recall being repelled by Mr. Grouchy, who, while dabbing at spots here and there on the car, lets out a constant stream of profanity and scatalogical references that might insult a millionaire rapper. He seems mad, angry, mean-spirited and ready to strangle anybody who gets close, so I slink away and hide at the front office till the car is paroled back into my care.

This guy failed to show up for the Washee Quickee public relations seminar.

Anyhow, being basically an optimist, today I decide to risk a car wash, hoping that the facility has changed hands or that there’s been some kind of turnover in personnel.

There’s no simple way to determine the System at Washee Quickee on the first visit—you just have to figure it out. The entrance is complicated and umarked and the staff rolls its collective eyes when you don’t know the rules.

“Turn off the engine! Roll up the windows! Put it in neutral. Leave the keys! Get out!”

These are the barked instructions, only they roll rapidly off the tongue and overlap each other so that you have to have them repeated once or twice to make sure you are following the rules. When you turn your car over to a stranger for 15 minutes, you want to get it back—you don’t want to lose it on a technicality.

Even though the quality of gruffness is still at its usual high level, at least the grouchy old man is nowhere to be seen, so you count your blessings and abandon your vehicle.

Up front, in the moldy-fragranced waiting area, there’s a TV blaring, a couple of men are staring at the tube, where people are shouting profanities and punching each other—stand-ins for the grouchy old man.

I look at the clerk window and see that no-one is on duty. I peer around to find somebody who will take my money. A woman is sitting in the back of the office with her back to me, gazing at a computer screen. I wait a minute or two, give up, and head for a chair, at which point the woman yells, “This is where you pay!” Like my elementary school teachers, she has rear-view vision.

I pay and plop myself down with a copy of a three-year-old ESPN magazine. The employees wandering in and out are cordial, as are the waiting customers. I can get through this!

Out front of Washee Quickee, once my car is delivered in whitened condition, I notice a long streak of grime that hasn’t been touched. The employee quickly makes it disappear, explaining, “Them guys (the ones within the car wash) don’t notice nothin’.”

I thank him profusely and tip him, grateful for having survived another trip to the nether world of car washery.

“Your car is clean!” Liz notices with delight that night. She is relieved that her embarrassment level will be reduced a few points next time she rides with me.

And, for a few days, I drive around feeling like I’ve just had a great shoe shine

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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The autumn light of the October country sculpts everything in this sunny room and re-creates it in its own image.

Right now, I am at the Ruffner Mountain Nature Center meeting room, immersed in the tiny vibrant world of poetry and poets.

Those who are present reflect the autumn light with their smiles. We’re all here because we want to be here. We’re all here because They don’t know we’re here, They don’t know we’re having a good time, and what They don’t know won’t allow Them to get at us.

Poet Jerri Beck is reading from her new collection TRIBAL MARKINGS, and we the present-and-accounted-for are sharing her creative outpouring and imagining our own lives contrasted to hers.

It occurs to me that in my innards I am the sum total of just Three Things: the writings of others, my own writings, and the experiences I survive. When you find me not experiencing or reading or writing, you can be sure that I am There, not Here.

Bits and pieces of Wisdom and Warning and Wishing float through the imagination and excitedly raise their hands to get attention. Just now, a quote that has resided within for decades waves at me:

“In the city of the insane, the sane are kept behind bars.” 

–Erich Fromm

Being an emotive scholar-observer (perhaps known today as merely a Nerd), it is easy to accept such thoughts as normal. While others are nestled all snug in their beds with visions of smartphones and football and chainsaw films and recreational pharmaceuticals prancing through their heads, my own skull experiences philosophical ponderings and why-nots and what-ifs and how-could-theys and why-is-this’s.

Since it’s the only way to be Me that I know about, I can only hope that it is the Right Way—the Right Way being the way that doesn’t hurt anybody, causes the least amount of collateral damage, makes things easier to endure. On a good day that’s where I am.

So…when I notice that the society around me seems insane at times, those are the times that I search for the sane folks, the folks who aren’t doing crazy or acting crazy or being crazy.

That explains today, the day I get to spend an hour with poets—some of whom don’t know they are poets, others of whom practice poetry and love it. An afternoon like this lends its own comfort to me—the comfort that assures me that, just for a moment, the insane world can have its way without even missing me. If there’s no roll call, I can get away with being peaceful, pleasant, creative, gentle, standing next to other people who just for a moment are also being peaceful, pleasant, creative, gentle.

The autumn light of this October country doesn’t notice us at all. It just is.

And since the insane generally don’t pay much attention to invisible beings like us, we usually get away with being sane. Don’t tell them about us. They’ll try to recruit us with a sales pitch but they’ll be thinking all the time about the bars we could be behind

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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The Woman of a Certain Age walks calmly and deliberately down the middle of 17th Street South. She stares straight ahead and straight through the Man with the Big Old Station Wagon, who is exiting his vehicle carrying in one hand a large plastic drink cup.

The Man with the Big Old Station Wagon first wonders whether the Woman of a Certain Age is someone he knows, or someone he should know, but he cannot tell. Then, he wonders whether she is approaching him to panhandle, which would not be an uncommon act in these here parts these days.

The closer she gets, the more it becomes apparent that she is indeed not someone he knows, that she is also not preparing to panhandle him. Not knowing what else to do, and fearing she might stop and capture his time through conversation, he pretends not to notice her, closes the door and walks around the car away from her, as if he never noted her presence.

The Woman of a Certain Age walks on by, still in the center of the street, and he guesses that perhaps she’s in the center of the street in order to avoid the sidewalk potholes and cracks that abound on Southside Birmingham. Or maybe she feels safer in the street, since this places some distance between her and strangers and yapping dogs and unwanted familiarities. He would understand fully, were this the case.

He is relieved because this is his day off. During the week, a happy prisoner of his own shop, he is obliged to face and deal with any and all manner of humanity, much as a bartender, trapped behind a bar, listens to an incredible array of stories and demands and jokes and rants. He enjoys all those stories and demands and jokes and rants because they are sure material for the writings and commentaries he produces regularly for his own entertainment and for his followers. But, on his day off, he finds relief and solace in dealing solely with people of his own choosing. During the week, there is no choice. Furthermore, his day off is the day he recovers and rejuvenates from the energy it takes to deal with all those stories and demands and jokes and rants.

He silently thanks the Woman of a Certain Age for passing on by. Should she enter his shop next week, he will give her his full attention, he will be happy to listen to all those stories and demands and jokes and rants, because that is what good store-owners should do.

The Man in the Big Old Station Wagon walks up the stairs of his front porch, unlocks the front door, closes it behind him, and breathes more easily, anticipating an afternoon of peace and quiet.

He goes upstairs, activates the computer, and writes this love note to you

© 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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