Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6oUDZboDxI&feature=youtu.be

or read his tale below:

I GOT THE PARANOID BLUES OH YEAH

 The beat of the city gets into your head sometimes. And some days it’s hard to control.

You can get so carried away by the multi-tasking immediacy of the city that you begin to suspect everything’s amiss in the normal ebb and flow of things.

It’s like this, you see:

I get into my car and switch on the ignition and this rock ‘n’ roll song is blaring forth. Huh? I don’t voluntarily listen to rock and pretty much remain a dyed-in-the-wool nerdnik. Jazz and classical music dominate, along with specific tunes from my childhood and young adult years.

That’s why, suddenly, I get this creepy feeling:

How did rock ‘n’ roll music get into my car radio speakers?

My brain races:

Did anybody else drive the car lately?

No, nobody would be caught live or dead driving my old rusty trusty station wagon bookmobile. So it couldn’t be that.

Did one of the wandering street people get into the car and sleep there overnight, staying warm and listening through stockinged cap?

Don’t know. It’s a possibility, since the door lock fell out a year ago and therefore I can’t secure the car anyhow.

Hmm…

I haven’t had the car serviced in a long time–usually at car washes and car repair places, employees fulfill their ironclad job description provision that you must immediately change the station in the vehicle you’re working on or washing, else the owner won’t know that you’ve actually been inside doing anything useful.

Uh, maybe the FM switch got hit accidentally and I’m hearing some AM oldies station.

Horror of horrors—somebody ELSE’S music!

Nope, that switch doesn’t work anyhow.

And then, of course, the rock and roll music fades down and the National Public Radio announcer comes on and continues reading news, having employed the music as a kind of meaningless bridge from one story to another.

Now I feel kind of silly and comforted at the same time, but that’s about normal, cause the big city does that kind of thing to you if you let it and don’t I need a vacation about now?

Maybe some nice classical music would calm me down—but then, the station plays such music only at zero-listener times of day.

I’ll have to resort to punching the out-of-fashion audio cassette player PLAY button, then descending into the peaceful and calming sounds of Miles Davis and Ahmad Jamal and Gershwin and Mozart.

Musical nerdnikness settles me down and gives me permission to manage my day in the only way I know how.

I’ll be OK any moment now 

© 2018 A.D. by Jim Reed

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

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Hear Jim’s audio podcast: https://youtu.be/Y9wbuyfXKlQ

or read his thoughts below:

RE-NOTICING THE UNNOTICEABLE

“Get up and walk across the room!” my acting teacher, Marian Gallaway, insists. I’m part of a circle of seated college students who are at the beck and call of the charismatic and flamboyant woman we all call “Doc” Gallaway.

Doc Gallaway is addressing me directly, so I have no choice in the matter. I’ve got to take to the runway and become an example for the class. I know the routine. Having been in a play directed by her, I have learned that she is dictator and I am subject. I arise from the folding chair and, well, just walk as if I’m going somewhere.

“Impressive,” Doc proclaims. “You see how he carries himself?” I keep walking to the edge of the circle, then about-face and return to my chair. “What do I see?” Doc asks the fearful students. No answer.

“He walks as if he is carrying great responsibility upon his shoulders,” Doc continues. She concludes, “Watch people, how they move, and carry this into your character onto the stage.”

That is her lesson for the day.

My earlier instructors…people who help me learn to watch humans closely…give me the courage to blatantly stare while the species goes about its daily activities. I am only now, in the third act of life, beginning to appreciate their gifts.

For instance…

Back in the day, Frances Reed, my mother, loves nothing better than to sit with me in a public area and point out details about passing people. To this day, it is my favorite pastime, uncovering clues about what each person is trying to hide, or clues about what is obvious to the viewer but invisible to the person being observed.

Uncle Buddy McGee, a decorated WWII paratrooper, returns from the War with two Purple Hearts and a passel of stories and tales about his experiences in the midst of European battles. He teaches me the value of turning swords into plowshares, for every bit of horror he observed is turned into humorous narrations designed to make me laugh while teaching embedded lessons about life.

Helen Hisey, my eighth-grade speech teacher, teaches me how to rise fearless before crowds of friends and strangers…rise fearless and just get on with the performance, making sure that every word and movement means something clear and specific to the audience.

And so on. Lots of people teach me lots of things, some of which I forget to employ, others of which I practice daily whether or not awareness accompanies them.

The peculiar thing about great Life Lessons is that they have to be re-learned or re-visited now and then. They remain entrenched in deep memory but often get obfuscated by life events and travails. They must be dug out, dusted off, and re-purposed.

Today, I am digging for buried treasure, treasures awaiting my re-appreciation.

Doc Gallaway and Frances Reed and Buddy McGee and Helen Hisey and a dozen others are visited in hidden memory and resuscitated each time I am in need of bolstering or cheering up or sobering up. When I temporarily forget their instructions, I falter and lose my way.

So, this very day is the day I re-up my observational skills. Not only will I issue forth my courage and continue my daily vigilance, but, someday soon, I will turn my Noticing abilities upon my teachers. For so long, I have taken them for granted, so now I plan to examine and observe the teachers themselves. It’s too late to teach them anything new, but maybe my recollections will turn up some more life lessons that they taught me by sheer example.

Time to re-notice the unnoticeable

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast

Listen to Jim brief audio podcast: https://youtu.be/lKFwZ1i_aqo

or read his memoir below:

SWING YOUR PARTNER ‘ROUND AND ‘ROUND

Billy the Tough Kid zooms and weaves his thick-tired bicycle through the after-school playground crowd, singing loudly with a copy-cat twang, “Swing your partner ’round and ’round! Pick her up and throw her down!”

Billy’s bike comes just close enough to students to make them jump or yell or giggle or hug close their skirts and book bags. Billy is skilled at pushing the boundaries of decorum a tad beyond School Rules. Just enough at the edge not to get disciplined. Just enough to call attention to himself. Just enough to cement a memory that lasts all the way from the 1940′s to the 21st Century.

Billy is a Tough Kid because we meeker students allow him to be. We kind of admire his brazenness—wouldn’t it be fun to be Billy the Tough Kid for a day? What would our Mommas say?

During Northington Elementary School recess one day, Jimmy, a toadie of Billy, calls a few of us into a huddle and shows off his genuine brand-new switchblade knife. We are in awe and are even allowed to touch the polished bone handle.

Jimmy is also the purveyor of naughty French postcards extracted from his WWII-veteran father’s stash, but most of us are too young to appreciate this. We kind of wander off to the safety of volleyball and tag games.

But his conspiratorial zeal makes an impression and remains sheltered in long-term memory.

I find my gentle giant in grammar school. John is a strong, to-the-point, seasoned kid who knows the ways of the world. Who, unlike Billy and Jimmy, never shows off, always dispenses quiet and sometimes misplaced gems of wisdom.

John is my temporary hero because he gives me a lift on his bike when we leave the school grounds. He drops me off at home but never visits. Instead, he pedals the heavy used bike up the hill east of Northington and disappears into the afternoon.

My next-door temporary after-school neighbor, Bubba, is a friendly playmate who has no interest in bullying or winning or showing off. We’re sitting in the shabby Tide Theatre, watching a B-grade movie, scarfing popcorn and sharing a dope (back then, cola drinks were nicknamed “dopes” for reasons we had to learn in later life). Actor Steve Cochran, a master of B-gradedness, pulls a gun on somebody and is threatening to blow his head off. I’m really into the story but suddenly realize that Bubba is crying in fear.

“It’s OK, Bubba…it’s just a movie.” He is still upset. Finally I say, “This isn’t real, it’s just play-like.”  Bubba calms down because he understands the term “play-like.” It’s how we kids of playground and front yard and back yard and vacant lot communicate with one another.

“Hey, Bubba, let’s play-like you are the bad guy trying to rob a bank and I’m the gunslinger who’s going to stop you,” or “Let’s play-like we are Robin Hood and his Merry Men, out to get the sheriff of Nottingham.”

We would play-like in all our spare time during summer days that never lasted long enough.

What lessons did Billy, Jimmy, John, Bubba and all those elementary school companions teach me?

I guess that, without meaning to, they taught me to travel back in time and show some appreciation for them and who they were and who they came from and where they would wind up. They all had lives to live, and I had my life to live, and we all remain connected to this day by those tiny, seemingly insignificant encounters.

If I could meet them just one more time, what would I say today?

I’d tell Billy, Thanks for the memory of a class clown who could take a square dance song and make it funny, make me see it in a new way.

I’d say to Jimmy, thanks for showing me that great knife—I’ve never had one like that, but I still remember the joy and comfort having that knife in your pocket gave you.

To John, I’d say, Thanks for paying attention to a shy and observant little kid who didn’t have many friends, was no good at sports, but who could take the time many decades later to resuscitate a sweet memory of unconditional goodness.

To Bubba, I’d say, Thanks for making me aware that everybody reacts differently, in their own special way, to what is going on around them. I’ll never assume that people feel exactly the way I do, and I’ll always try to look more closely at who they are and how they feel.

Observing and appreciating people, not judging them, finding that shiny seam of innocence that runs through them, trying to see past the facade and bluster and acting-out that disguise and protect them from not-always-friendly realities…

That’s what I do on my best days in my best moods. And on the dark days, I try to imagine myself being the clown who knows how to swing my partner ’round and ’round just to get a laugh or a burst of joy out of us both

© Jim Reed 2018 A.D.

jim@jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com

http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast