Listen to Jim’s 3-minute audio podcast:
or read his story below…
THE PLACE OF ASSIGNATION WHEREIN ALL SWEET MEMORY ORIGINATES
Things are bigger, in the times of yore I’m reminiscing about this morning.
Back in my day, young’uns like me race to the mail box just to be first to grab enormous issues of Life Magazine and discover what bigger-than-life people command this week’s cover. The nearly life-sized faces influence the way I view the world. For instance, there is gaunt Gandhi, to this day my idea of how a normal human, warts and all, can influence millions through exemplary behavior.
I learn from Gandhi that people actually watch what I do. When I misbehave, their expectations descend. When I do something right and good, they rise up to meet me.
Even larger than magazines in these pre-television years, are movies and the people who tell me big-screen stories I cannot forget. There is James Baskett, a charismatic actor who tells me the morality tales and behavior parables I will need for the next seven decades. For instance, as Uncle Remus, Baskett taught me to look for the humor and humanity in every situation:
Everybody’s got a laughin’ place,
A laughin’ place, to go ho-ho!
Take a frown, turn it upside-down,
And you’ll find yours I know ho-ho!
To this day I return to my laughing place whenever things loom sour. It is my assignation shelter, where no-one can pound me with negativity.
And actual real-life people influence me enormously. Uncle Brandon McGee becomes my model for how to excite the imagination of a withdrawn kid. He is always accessible to visitors like me, showing me how to candle eggs to ensure quality, how to take an old piece of metal advertising signage and turn it into something useful, how to make his pet dog memorable by naming him Stinky.
Uncle Brandon, like Uncle Remus, makes me find a smile where none is apparent, forces me to make my imagination and innate energy useful.
Many decades later, I take Ray Bradbury’s advice and jump off the mountain, building my parachute on the way down, landing beyond the walls of corporate incarceration I endure for too long. I land on a splintery bench in a pocket park near my home. Each morning, I walk to the bench, sit for a meditative period, and allow my laughing place to rise up and comfort me.
Nowadays, my laughing place–my sweet assignation zone–is portable. I take my gifts from Uncle Brandon, Gandhi, Uncle Remus, and dozens of others who matter to me, dozens of others to whom I matter, and I escort them safely along the way. They are not where you can see them anymore. And I am still learning from them the neverending lessons that remain to be learned.
They are all secure in my laughing place, my bench of lovely assignation
© 2019 A.D. by Jim Reed