Life, actually…

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TICKLE ME JIMBO

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When I was a kid, people often called me Jimbo. It’s what they did to guys named Jim back then.

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This was OK with me, since I found it funny.

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Speaking of funny:

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I’m sitting and talking and listening and eating, which is just about the most fun you can have clothed or unclothed—at least, sometimes.

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My friend Jo is sitting and talking and eating and listening, too.

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This is an opportunity to learn something new, so, as is my wont, I pop out a spontaneous question, “When you are alone, do you ever laugh?”

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Jo’s eyes grow wider than usual and, instead of answering, she exclaims, “Why, what an unusual question to ask! Why would you ask that?”

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This gives her time to ruminate and come up with a reply, I suppose.

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I say, “Just something I wanted to know—you don’t have to answer it.”

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But Jo does answer, “Well, yes, I do laugh when I’m alone.”

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I can believe this, since Jo has a wicked sense of humor, thus I’m satisfied.

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So many people I’ve met through the eons don’t seem to have the ability to laugh at much of anything, much less at themselves, much less with themselves. I try not to hang with these folks, since I do like to laugh—especially at myself.

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Just me observing me is sometimes hilarious, particularly as I grow older. Added to that is life, which is increasingly hilarious as well.

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I grew up as a question-asker, which scares some people and intrigues others. When very young, I determined that the best way to find out stuff was to ask questions. I also learned that not asking questions can lead to a very dull time, since lots of people don’t ever think to ask me a question.

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Either they don’t want to know anything about me, or they are content with being quiet and somber.

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When I don’t receive an answer to a question, I learn twice as much as I’ll ever learn from a stiffly proper answer. Either way, I’m going to learn something new in the process. It may not be what you hoped I would learn, but it will be a learning experience.

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Myself when young naturally gravitated to activities that required question-asking, and I therefore learned a bunch—a bunch of primarily useless information, but information that was interesting and exciting and funny and scary, regardless of its uselessness.

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So, I became a child actor and performer and teacher and reporter and writer, all of which require the asking of questions and, further, the listening to answers.

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I’m never bored. I’m often in the presence of others who are bored, but just asking them questions to get their reaction sometimes makes them forget how much pleasure they are deriving from being bored. It’s like shock therapy.

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As I learned from H.G. Wells and the Pet Shop Boys, people who are bored are people who are being boring. Both states of mind frighten me, so I just go on my merry way, asking and listening and treading the maelstrom that threatens all of us—the maelstrom that wants to bore us to death.

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Tell me something funny and uncruel and I’ll have a good laugh. If you can’t think of anything funny to say, just say whatever comes to mind.

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Don’t worry—I’ll find something funny in it

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© 2023 A.D. by Jim Reed

Life, actually…

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A MOM FOR ALL SEASONS

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“Get ready for the Holidays,” a deep-down voice intones.

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“Why now?” I reply to that deep and deep-down inner voice.

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“Get ready for the Holidays, because that is where your Mother resides.”

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I snap awake. I’m half-dreaming, on my morning journey from sleepland to up-and-at-’em land.

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Why am I cloaked in holiday memories on this particular day? Maybe it’s the almost-Fall nearly-Winter feeling in the air. Maybe it’s just dusty old memories shaken but not yet stirred.

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For whatever reason, I’m remembering the way Christmas and Holidays used to be. We village elders have earned the right to jump back and forth from past to present and back again.

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Here’s a Christmas memory that won’t go away. It’s true and actual:

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Christmas comes but once a day!

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Really, Christmas does come but once a day! I can’t keep it out of my mind.

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You see, my mother was a Christmas mother.

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Every holiday provided the excuse Mom needed for bolstering her own spirits and the spirits of those around her.

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Our little family on Eastwood Avenue in long-ago Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was a Christmas family because of Mother.

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You see, Christmas was the very thing our family needed most to counteract the dead of Winter, to bring light to the longest nights of the year, to give us a chance to once again believe in the idea of Spring. Without the idea of Spring in mind, how could we possibly survive the Winter?

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We kids and Mother decorated everything that didn’t move, and some things that did. Our pet dogs Brownie and Sissy might be seen running through the house decked in wreaths or gossamer aluminum icicles. The windows would be sprayed with fake snow. The plastic candles with big red bulbs shone through the fake snow to provide just the right glow to passersby.

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The Christmas tree had to be somewhat democratically selected by the entire family as we trudged through the cold woods near Uncle Pat McGee’s home in nearby Peterson. It wasn’t really a Christmas tree if it didn’t have to be lugged through what seemed like miles of forest to our waiting Willys automobile. It wasn’t really a tree if we didn’t later find pine or fir needles in our underwear, if we didn’t get our fingers sticky with resin that couldn’t be removed voluntarily.

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It couldn’t be called a Christmas tree unless half the needles had fallen off by New Year’s Day. Those needles were necessary to remind us in the middle of July— when we were still finding them under the sofa and in our socks—that, yes, another Christmas just might come one day. 

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Every part of Christmas was special to Mother and us kids. We got the tree up and decorated as early as possible and sometimes did not take it down till February was threatening to occur. 

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And every decoration counted, every decoration was sacred. 

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There were cheap plastic Baby Jesuses and velvet-clothed Santa Clauses, Bakelite angels and glassy angel hair strands, small ceramic Snoopies and brown-paper handmade stars, miniature mangers and stockingcapped elves, tin whistles and school-pasted wooden shards with glitter applied, strung popped popcorn necklaces and varnished mummified cookies. 

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Mother’s fireplace mantle was fully and carefully decorated and arranged with a mixture of kids’ handcrafted stuff and store-bought doodads. The front and back doors were decorated, the lawn was bedecked, even the bathroom door was all Christmassed-up.

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Christmas was a yearlong idea, a monthlong project, an intense array of garlands and gewgaws, clutter and array.

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So much was put into Christmas that the images stayed with you all year long and in fact all life long.

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Every and each time I smell ginger or apples or vanilla or pine or baking dough or roasting pecans, Christmas comes back to me in a second. Each time I pass an ornately dressed bungalow in a tiny neighborhood, it all comes back. Every time I hear the old carols, whenever I look up in the frozen winter to see a bright star or two, whenever I see the expectant gleam in a child’s eye, Christmas comes back to me.

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Christmas comes but once a day.

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When the very idea of Christmas, the very idea of unselfish giving, the very idea of warm family gatherings and sharings…when these things die from our lives, won’t we all die a bit, too? When the soul goes flat from lack of sweet remembrance, the world will be declared flat, too.

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Thanks to you, Mother, I can hold on to Christmas even when there’s nothing else visible to grab hold of

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…

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PLAYING HYDE-AND-GO-JEKYLL

AT THE HALLOWE’EN BARBIE QUEUE

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In olden days Down South, we used to sit of an afternoon on the front porch and watch the world sneak by. It was great fun.

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We porch-sitters were just us. Everybody who passed by constituted the World as we didn’t know it. All passers-by were mysterious and perplexing—thus, entertaining.

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We had no idea who these apparitions were, but our colorful imaginations allowed us to guess, to make up lives and stories to go along with what we saw. Our unfettered daydreams painted exciting back-stories to go along with clueless visitors.

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Short-attention-spans were not yet invented. At least we didn’t call them short-attention-spans. Probably paid close attention to those split seconds of observation, then filed them away in memory, then awaited the next fleeting visitations. No time to label or distort or criticize. Just along for the ride.

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These days, front porches no longer seem to matter as much. Our motorized vehicles are porches-in-motion. We drive by the world in place of the world’s driving past us.

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One artifact from those old Down South days remains: Dad jokes.

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Yep, I still crack Dad jokes. Only now they have evolved into granddad and great-granddad jokes. They haven’t changed much. Just ask my grown kids and groaning grandkids.

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An example might help. We are in our mobile front porch and cruise by a movie emporium where people are lined up to see the latest trendy film.

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“Looks like a Barbie queue,” I the village elder comment. If any young’un is listening there will be a moan or a chuckle accompanied by a momentary smile. One Dad Joke down and billions to come.

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Luckily for the world and family at large, most of my quips are silently written down for later use. Most are not heard by anyone but yours truly. This is my small gift to world peace.

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For instance, Hallowe’en is coming up. Soon a story about Hallowe’en will compose itself and appear online and on paper. Time to recall horror stories that remain in Recall Storage. We kids used to play a game called Hide-and-Go-Seek. In Dad Joke world, this now becomes a game called Hyde-and-Go-Jekyll. It’s more fun at this time of year.

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And so on.

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Thanks for paying attention. It won’t last long because you are probably busy composing your next Dad Joke or Mom Joke.

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I hope you cause groans even louder than mine

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Life, actually…in my way-back memories of times past…

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1987: THE PERSISTENCE OF A DOWN SOUTH MEMORY

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The persistence of memory and its everchanging neverchanging indelibility is a mystery I’ll take with me to the end, I suppose.

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It is one day in 1987. I wander the downtown streets of hometown Tuscaloosa for the first time in twenty years, looking for something comforting from my past. It is a day that I know is about to bring me surprises unpredictable.

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I am between frenetic tasks. I have a few minutes to take a deep breath or two. I feel like a time traveler.

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I am treading the suspense by trying to find niches with familiar faces staring out, icons that will wave back at my glossed-over remembrances of younger and simpler times.

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I recall the old Ritz movie theater, the one on the Other Side of the street, the side with the pool hall and spittoons and roughneck hangouts—in other words, the more exciting side of the street.

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When I was a kid, the Ritz Theater always screened second-run Republic pictures with cowboys and spacemen and serials and double features and cartoons for kids during Saturday matinees. The Ritz was also constructed rather compactly in contrast to the other theaters in town, and its balcony was narrow, its restrooms dank and smelly, and its patrons a little shabbier.

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Something about the Ritz insinuates itself into my dreams over the years and becomes a kind of fevered presence during restless nightdreams. The theater haunts my mind and makes for some nicely scary imaginings.

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This wandering-around day in Tuscaloosa, the Ritz comes back to me and I try to find it. Where the Ritz once stands, there is nothing left but a parking lot occupying the narrow space between two buildings. It simply isn’t there anymore.

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Do I have the wrong street? I look around, walk a way down and up the block. No, I am right. The Ritz has evaporated.

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I return to the lot and look for signs of the Ritz. And there they are. Shadows of stairs two stories up one exterior wall. Remnants of arches on another wall.

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Part of the balcony can be detected in one-dimensional profile, where workers have not bothered to patch the gaps they left.

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It is a haunt of a theater now, with gargoyles wistfully filling holes where theater stuff once was.

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I stare for a while.

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Finally, I step back onto the sidewalk and look again, blink my eyes. At this moment, I realize the Ritz is still there. It will be there as long as I am here. It is in my dreams. It doesn’t need to be an actual structure anymore.

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My Tuscaloosa recollections are a mixture of childhood adventure, scary interludes, romantic notions, pretend-swordfights, loving family laughter, hugs that can never cease.

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Like the Ritz Theater, all my memories comprise a permanent companion, one I don’t have to forget, one I can continue to puzzle over and learn from.

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I am in a state of disturbed comfort now. I can smile more often because I’ve learned how to put on the Ritz…and use it as a reminder that I never have to be without the people I love, the things I love

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© Jim Reed 2023 A.D.

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Listen to Jim’s 4-minute podcast:  https://youtu.be/UZnbff1NVcU

or read on…

Life, actually…

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IGNORABLE ADVICE FROM THE PAGES OF GEEZER QUARTERLY MAGAZINE

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These notes fell out of my Red Clay Diary this morning. They apply solely to guys who are so far gone in age they are largely invisible to younger folks. Here goes…

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Personal-appearance tips from the Down South imaginary pages of GQ (Geezer Quarterly) Magazine.

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FASHION TIPS FOR GEEZERS:

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If you’re going to primp, do it once a day, preferably right before you let anybody else see you. It looks vain to keep checking your cowlick or your comb-over or your bald pate all day, so just do it right one time and forget about it. One of the perks of being aged and over the hill is you can walk around all day looking unkempt, simply because nobody notices.

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Throw away all your socks and get a dozen pair in just one color, maybe black. That way, you don’t have to waste time finding matching partners. Black goes with everything. If you’re a geezer, people expect you to wear unmatched socks. Black dissolves that problem.

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If you don’t want your considerable gut to call attention to itself, wear a black (there’s that color again!) shirt or a Book-‘Em-Danno shirt. Book-‘Em-Danno shirts are so colorful and distracting that nobody will focus on your flab. Besides, it’s kind of OK to be chunky when you’re wearing a Book-‘Em-Danno shirt. But if you want to remain invisible, do the black shirt thing.

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The no-iron rule: select all casual clothes based on whether they have to be pressed after washing. Ironing is a waste of time and, like I said, after a certain age, everybody expects you the geezer to be wrinkled, but nobody expects your clothes to be wrinkle-free. Beware of friends and acquaintances who have their jeans washed, starched and ironed. There’s something a little bit wrong there.

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Never, never do a comb-over…unless you go all the way. Comb-overs have the same effect on people as toupees and hair club do-overs. Everybody notices them. And the best un-kept secret about toupees and wigs is: If you wear one, that’s all anybody will ever remember about you. Period.*

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*Exception to the toupee rule: Give actors and performers a pass on their toupees. It’s how they make their living. They have to look good to get jobs. Just enjoy how good-looking they are and stop with the snarky remarks.

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All day each day, avoid looking at yourself in mirrors. It will only demoralize you. Nothing more disturbing than seeing the reflection of some old saggy baggy guy and suddenly realizing it’s you. Best to cherish how you appeared at your best in high school. You can edit out the remembered acne, of course.

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Each pocket you add to your shirt ages you another decade. One pocket is useful, two pockets are overkill—you might as well wear a protector. The coolest thing to do is wear shirts without pockets, since pockets only encourage you to stuff things into them, thus bulking you up even more.

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On the other hand, make sure you utilize all the pockets in your trousers. Keep everything in them for easy access…and don’t ever wear a belt pouch/fanny pack (it looks like a snake that just swallowed something really huge). This allows you to keep both hands free, swinging loose and easy.

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Don’t get me started about shoes. I learned early on that the only shoes worth wearing are the ones that fit comfortably from the first moment you put them on. If they hurt in the store, they’re never going to stop.

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Don’t wear trousers unless your pockets contain a set of keys, IDs, money.  This prevents hours of lost time searching for the above. Don’t put them down anywhere, ever!

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Had enough of this for one sitting?

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Why not absorb today’s GQ tips and see whether they work for you? If you don’t happen to be a geezer yet, look what you’re missing!

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And stay tuned for more geezer wisdom as it occurs. Or recurs

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2023 A.D. by Jim Reed

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