3 old Sports Illustrated magazines
CRY FOR HAPPY
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CRY FOR HAPPY
If you are reading this, you must be hanging in there despite the fact that you and I are survivors of yet another Election Day.
Yes, Grasshopper, people do live through times like these–perhaps with great caution, maybe with a dab of apprehension, but certainly with a healthy dose of goodwill and humor.
The world around us swirls with disjointed factoids and fictions, mythologies and truths. It is our job to bear it all, to make sure we take care of our loved ones and seek the good in each and every person, the good in all the peoples living on this small spheroid afloat in a directionless galaxy.
The all-consuming media clog our sensibilities with the good, the bad, the uglified, the uplifting. Awash with all this debris, we who have survived the election–all of us–must get on with making security and love and kindness our topmost priorities.
The uglified stuff must be stared down, confronted, humiliated, marginalized…the beautiful stuff must be accentuated, made prominent. The bestial must be attenuated.
Our fellow travelers are watching us, so we must set inspiring standards of behavior. If we fail to do this, what good are we?
It’s the only path that makes any sense.
As Henry James said, “Three things in human life are important: The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”
Living a kindly life is difficult. Difficult is the only way anything good ever gets done.
Ray Bradbury said, “Living at risk is jumping off the cliff and building your wings on the way down.”
If we wish to be fondly remembered by future generations, we must behave each moment at the top of our genetics.
We must build our wings whether descending or ascending
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
THE PERFECT DAY OF TRUE GRITS AND SALTED BLACK-EYED PEAS
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THE PERFECT DAY OF TRUE GRITS AND SALTED BLACK-EYED PEAS
Bill, the guy from Up North, is visiting Alabama for the first time, and he is poking at his food as if it might be hiding a live squirrel.
We’re having an expense-account dinner, trying to entice him into moving down south by introducing him to our exotic food, our southern hospitality culture.
Bill is making a effort to slow down and sync up with our slow southern rhythms.
Finally, he reaches down into a serving of black-eyed peas, picks one up, examines it closely and says, “Is this a grit?”
At this moment, we realize this is not going to be easy, this baptism-by-food initiation.
Earlier, looking over the menu, Bill asks, “What is this OCK-ruh dish?” We know he’s never known the pleasures of okra. As James Dickey once said, “If God made anything better than okra, he held it back for himself.”
Just for the record, here’s how you eat black-eyed peas, assuming they have been carefully and correctly prepared:
First, you shake lots of salt on the peas, followed by ground pepper and maybe even some pepper sauce. Then, like all true Deep South connoisseurs, you shake a heap of catsup upon them.
Don’t laugh. Everybody in my family does this, and the result is delicious. Try it.
What we try to get across to Bill is the fact that it’s not the plain-and-simple southern food that tastes great, it’s the stuff you add to it in correct proportions.
For instance here’s how you eat grits, assuming they have been carefully and lovingly prepared:
Make sure they are piping hot. Salt and pepper them. Add a dollop or two of butter, some cheese, even a touch of garlic, then vigorously stir them. Prepare ye for a transformative experience.
Something not to do if you want to immerse yourself in true dining ecstasy: Never, never eat grits plain, with no flavoring. They will taste like steamed particle board and you will never go near them again. Lots of visitors to the south have done this, and they are now lost souls, condemned forever to living on Ovaltine and non-iced, non-lemoned iced tea.
Ever gone to a Chicago diner and ordered iced tea? You’ll get that blank stare reserved only for aliens from far planets.
Down Here, there are things one does not do. We don’t put gravy on good steak. We will tolerate hash browns only if you have run out of grits. We know the difference between flavorless raw spinach leaves and hot, pork-flavored over-cooked tasty spinach.
And so on.
After all, what Bill needs to understand is that the South is a wonderful, friendly and warm place to live, but you must learn the rules about good food in order to truly enjoy yourself.
And the correct way to prepare barbecue is an entirely different story for a later time.
Does Bill “get it” and learn to relax around southern cuisine? Er, southern eating?
Don’t know. He disappears and is never heard from again.
Which means we get to divide up his servings
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF TOOTHPASTE TUBES
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THE SECRET LANGUAGE OF TOOTHPASTE TUBES
In case you haven’t brushed your teeth yet, please read this column carefully.You do not want to mistreat your teeth.
As the philosopher Soupy Sales once said, “Be true to your teeth and they won’t be false to you.”
Here’s how to care for your teeth: “Brush teeth thoroughly after meals or at least twice a day,” according to the sacred text of Crest, imprinted on each tube of toothpaste.
If you are new to the teeth-brushing ritual, you may have questions: 1. “Can I get it over with first thing by brushing my teeth twice in five minutes?” 2. “If I forget to brush after meals, can I brush during or right before meals? After all, I have seen more than one person floss in public and feel this practice might not be unacceptable.” 3. “If a toothbrush is not readily available, may I substitute a hairbrush or whisk broom?” 4. If I brush on the run, is it permissible to forego toothpaste and substitute whatever is available, like bourbon or Diet Coke? 5. “How long do I brush? Can’t find any Crest instructions about this. Is one hour sufficient?” 6. “When there’s no convenient way to brush, can I just use a toothpick? I see all kinds of people walking out of restaurants, toothpicking away and making those TSK sounds.”
You may have many other questions, but perhaps you should pause and make a list.
Speaking of pausing, I heard this on NPR the other day, ”The players were taking a moment to pause.” Can’t get my mind around it, since this sentence seems to be saying the players were pausing to pause. Maybe they wanted to floss.
Well, to tell the tooth, I don’t have that much to talk about today, do I? I feel that somebody needs to address these issues, so it might as well be me.
One more grammar thought. There are signs everywhere that refer to parking violations. Can you tell me which is correct? Is it, “Prosecutors will be violated,” or “Violators will be persecuted,” or what? It would be fun to see a posted sign stating, “Violators will be mob-flossed.”
Oh, just one more grammar usage that scrambles my already scrambled mind:
“This program contains adult content.”
What does this mean? It seems to be saying, “This program contains content.” Can a program contain content? Would it be more proper to say, “This program contains language and subject matter suitable only for grown-ups or prodigies?
I would settle for, “This program contains images of people flossing, picking and brushing.”
This is one program I would avoid
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
KEEP YOUR NOSE CLEAN SO YOU CAN SMELL A PHONY
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KEEP YOUR NOSE CLEAN SO YOU CAN SMELL A PHONY
Listen, kiddos, and I will impart knowledge to you in a slightly oblique manner. Should you decide to pay attention, you might even learn something you didn’t know you needed to know. And even if you retain nothing at all from my imparted wisdom, you will at least exhibit the highest manifestation of human behavior—a chuckle.
Today, it starts with noses.
The grandiloquent comedians Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding gave us the gift of chuckles embedded with insight and palatable Aha! moments. Bob and Ray once said, “Keep your nose clean so you can smell a phony.” How much more succinct can you get when you are attempting to tell someone how to lead an alert and sagacious life? Just keep your nose clean so you can smell a phony.
Speaking of noses, sometimes they get stopped up, disengaging our ability to spot fakes. At those times a good sneeze helps. As another comedic team, Homer Haynes and Jethro Burns once reported, “Scientists have finally found the answer to the common cold: ‘Gesundheit!’”
Now and then the only way to get past a sticky situation or a morose thought is to sneeze, yell Gesundheit! and sally forth as if the world is A-OK once again. Homer and Jethro spent many decades spreading the goodwill of silly humor.
Are there other techniques for swatting away the phonies in our lives, the phony disinformation splattered over us, the snarky gossipy ill-informed comments that are hurled our way? Chuckles might help. As Mel Brooks has been preaching for a lifetime, the best way to send the enemy back into a squirmy black hole is to face the mean-spiritedness full on, laugh a healthy laugh, and go on about your business as if you have no use for such blather.
Don’t deny the enemy’s existence, just show the world that the enemy does not matter, has no effect, exerts zero control…over your ability to chuckle.
If you don’t pay attention to snarkyness, it becomes marginalized and of no importance to those of us who just want to lead good and sweet-natured lives.
The nose knows.
Keep the laughter alive, keep the nose clean, eat a banana, avoid slipping on the peel, yell Aha! or Gesundheit! once in a while.
And, when you want to share your kindness, your chuckles, keep me in mind
© 2021 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
GOODBYE, I MUST BE ARRIVING; HELLO, I MUST BE GOING
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GOODBYE, I MUST BE ARRIVING; HELLO, I MUST BE GOING
Here am I, heading southwest toward Taylorville, and I do not know whether I am coming or going.
Well, actually, I do know whether I am coming or going. It is just something I say to get the story jump-started. I am both coming and going. All the time.
While I write this, it is Saturday night, but by the time you read it, it will be Sunday at the earliest, and I will be on the road to Tuscaloosa.
I am leaving the comfort of my Southside home in order to pay respects to the life of Doreen, my late mother’s best friend and next-door neighbor. Doreen died the other day, and I am joining my sister, Barbara, in visiting Doreen’s son and daughter-in-law, Gregg and Lyric.
Leaving B’ham and arriving in T’town. Going and coming.
My Mother, Frances, loved nothing better than to chat over the back fence with Doreen. Together, they conducted one continuous, overlapping, neverending, stay-tuned-for-tomorrow’s-episode conversation that lasted for years.
And, who knows? They may still be at it right now.
At the services, I hope to meet people who knew Doreen better than I ever could. I hope to visit with Barbara, various nephews and nieces-in-law, and offspring galore.
I will not know exactly what to say, will not know exactly the right thing to say, but I have now lived long enough to know that there is no right thing to say. I just hope that being there a little while will mean something to those present. I know that seeing these longtime-interconnected people will definitely mean something to me.
And so it goes. Much of my life is spent paying it forward or making amends. The present does not have much heft, since it is either immediately in the past or immediately about to happen.
We birth, we stumble about, we have a few laughs, a few cries, we love, we puzzle over it all, we come, we go, maybe to come again. Who knows?
I do not know whether arriving is more important than leaving, I just know both are part of some mysterious process.
I do know that letting life gently flow over me is a lot more satisfying than cursing the darkness or resisting the light
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
O WHAT FUN IT IS TO WRITE
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O WHAT FUN IT IS TO WRITE
I have this bumper sticker at the bookstore, O WHAT FUN IT IS TO WRITE.
This bumper sticker serves as a litmus test for the eyes of wandering customers. The slogan attracts certain browsers; others do not even notice it. Some lift the sticker, frown at it, don’t quite absorb the arrangement of words, replace it, cruise on to the next curiosity.
Now and then, a gazer brightens up, chuckles in delight, and asks, “Can I buy this?”
I wonder which visitor spends some of each day writing, which is entertaining the idea of writing but never gets around to it, which wants to learn what it takes to be a writer, which dismisses the entire idea of writing, which admires writers, which disdains the concept of writing for pleasure.
I don’t have to wonder for long, because folks often tell me exactly what they think about writing.
“I used to keep a diary, but I finally threw it away. It wasn’t any good.”
“I’d like to start writing someday. Maybe when I retire.”
“I know a lot of stories but I’m not a writer, so I guess they won’t get written.”
“You know, don’t you, that writing doesn’t matter anymore. Computers can do it for you.”
Once in a while, a customer will be ready, willing and able to stop, listen, maybe even learn something. That’s when I jump in with my gently avid rant about the importance of diaries.
The reason many people begin their writing life by keeping diaries, is that nobody will see what’s in the diary until the writer is ready. And diaries can come in so many forms! A Dollar Store blank book is just as easy to write in as a leatherbound gilt-edged volume with acid-free paper.
A diary is simply a Message in a Bottle.
Humans have been placing messages in bottles ever since they were, well, humans.
And even before there were bottles!
Cave dwellers wrote picture stories on walls thousands of years ago. Cuneiforms–messages in red clay–have been in use for just about that long.
Like many people who write in diaries, I am screaming silently to the ethos that I MATTER!
Like other diarists, I hope that somebody somewhere will someday connect with my words and find something meaningful in them.
When I squirrel away a diary, I am saying to its unknown finder, KILROY WAS HERE. Jim Reed once existed. Jim Reed wants you to know that you matter, too…your words matter…your life in words matters. Your diary is worth the effort.
I like to think that my writings will be placed safely deep in a bank of Alabama red clay (it’s everywhere!) and discovered by a better civilization thousands of years hence. They may still know what red clay is–they may even still have kudzu (it’s everywhere!) growing in the red clay! They may even take heart in learning that those of us who lived so long ago were human, too.
When my time capsule The Diary is opened, I hope these future folk will think kindly of us, will recognize the evidence that despite all our flaws as a species, there are among us some good, helpful and gentle people.
Perhaps they will be inspired to continue the long, arduous but hopefully rewarding trek toward the idea that it could be that humans are worth saving and cherishing after all
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
THE TEMPORARY ONE-DAY INSTANT SALVATION CAPER
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THE TEMPORARY ONE-DAY INSTANT SALVATION CAPER
As Bronnie Nichols lowers my head underwater, I squeeze tight my eyes and suddenly realize I am about to die.
I can’t swim! I think in panic. What if he lets go of me? What if I get disoriented and can’t figure out which way is up, which way is the surface? Holy Moly!
I obviously survive the ordeal, or I wouldn’t be telling this true story so many decades later. So, to begin at one of the many beginnings from which I can select:
Bronnie Nichols does his job and baptizes me and gets me wet with God and makes me sputter a bit.
Reverend Bronnie Nichols is our pastor at Forest Lake Baptist Church when I am trying to grow up in Tuscaloosa, back in the 1940’s and 1950’s. We call him Brother Nichols, out of respect and tradition.
Brother Nichols is a distinguished-looking white-haired man with a laconic and pleasant manner, and in the pulpit, he appears even more laconic and pleasant. He doesn’t act like the other Baptist preachers we listen to on the radio or see delivering guest sermons at the church. Bronnie Nichols is nothing like the fire-and-brimstone evangelists who come through town during revivals, or who pitch tents or commandeer Denny Stadium for mass soul-savings.
No, Brother Nichols is kind of laid-back, intellectual, mildly profound, though he is judged harshly by some who say he does not make us in the congregation feel guilty enough to get through the week, once the Sunday sermon is over. Bronnie Nichols’ delivery is a sort of sweet, sing-song series of Bible quotations and moral lessons which he never seems to read. He actually “wings” his sermons!
That is impressive, because back in these long-ago days, folks feel that a preacher ought to be inspired by God or Mary or Jesus or Somebody Up There…so inspired that he doesn’t need notes or written-out sermons. Baptist preachers are supposed to walk back and forth across the stage (and during sermons like that, it certainly is a stage rather than a pulpit), waving their arms and making you regret the day you were born in sin—or at least regret what you did late last night. So, Brother Nichols does fill the bill to that extent—not having to rely on notes or worked-up speeches—but he fails in the arm-flailing department. He is just too distinguished to stoop to that sort of behavior.
One particularly guilt-provoking part of the Sunday sermon always comes at the end (the end being way past Noon…a good preacher proves his goodness by showing you how long he can hold you captive past Sunday lunchtime). This is when the choir and congregation join together in sad, passion-filled hymn-singing and Brother Nichols invites those who are ready to come down front and dedicate their lives to Jesus Christ and the other Powers Up There. In fact, the success of his sermons depends almost entirely upon how many people come down the aisle and say they want to Get Saved. If nobody comes forth, the Sunday lunch (we of course call it Sunday Dinner, as did just about everybody else except Yankees) conversation centered around whether or not Brother Nichols’ sermon has been good enough.
We really love Brother Nichols, because he looks so much like a preacher in the movies, and because he never makes us feel too guilty to show our faces in church next Sunday.
Anyhow, during those end-of-sermon hymns, little boys like me quiver in fear and expectation. We fight the impulse to run down front and let everybody know that we, too, want to be righteous and holy and forgiven for all we’ve done or want to do (in these days, we are mostly wanting pardon for what we want to do, since we don’t have much opportunity to escape the watchful eyes of family and neighbors). But going down in front of all those people is a terrifying prospect. Everybody will be looking at you. Everybody will be reminded that you haven’t already Been Saved, which means you are probably still sinning regularly. Then, they might want to know what you have been sinning at. Also, if you Get Saved, you’ll have to exert the effort to be good all the time, and that is totally alien territory.
But the sermon and the hymn pull and pull at you. The joyful sadness of knowing you can’t get to Heaven without a passport personally signed by Bronnie Nichols is almost unbearable. What if you don’t go down this Sunday, and you get run over by a ‘52 Ford pickup during the week? In spite of all your good intentions, you will wind up in Hell, and Hell is definitely a hell of a place, the way Brother Nichols describes it.
But the hymn goes on and on, and if only one or two people show up down front, Brother Nichols will have the choir sing yet another chorus, which puts even more pressure on you. Getting down to that sixth stanza that nobody knows by heart, is excruciating.
I hold out till I am thirteen years old. In fact, I am so stubborn that I hold out till a revival meeting is in progress, and a guest minister—not Brother Nichols—grabs me by my guilt and wrings it dry. Then I get the urge and follow it. I go down front, but immediately have second thoughts. That’s because during revivals, dozens of people pour down each night. In fact, many of them must spend the year preparing to go down only during revival. We know of some who go down every year, even though they have long ago been Baptized and Saved. They usually confess to additional sins and want some re-cleansing.
But going down front with so many others sort of takes the show biz out of the moment. I am hardly noticeable among the throng. It is hardly worth doing a good deed if no-one is watching. I later learn that comedian Tom Lehrer knows this all too well, too, when he sings,
“Be careful not to do your good deed when there’s no-one watching you.”
I go through with it, though. Getting baptized is a big event in the life of every Baptist, a cross between graduation and a funeral. You have to wear these stiff white robes (they tell you to wear a bathing suit underneath) and step into a pool (that’s what the kids call it) in front of the Sunday night congregation…and get dipped….submerged, not sprinkled…shaken, not stirred. I identify with other confused people I read about, such as Dorothy Parker, who was expelled from Catholic school for referring to Immaculate Conception as Spontaneous Combustion. What if I get all the terms mixed up?
The robes cling to my skin once I am standing there up to my chest in warm water, and Brother Nichols is kind of wet, too, calmly doing his recitation. Then, he leans me back into the water and takes me all the way under (I am told to hold my nose and cross my arms at the same time, so that I will look like a devout drowner. I long at this moment for a cyanide capsule).
After that, it is over. I return home feeling sacred for a whole night, before all doubts and temptations creep back in.
Strangely enough, getting baptized sort of washes me clean of wanting to go to church anymore, and I disagree with my father for years over the fact that I don’t want to go and he wants me to. It isn’t the Baptism so much as it is the structure of Sunday School that turns me away from the organized church.
Sunday School is painful, though I learn a great deal about what the Bible spins in the way of interesting and dramatic tales. In fact, I remember those Bible tales all my life and am amazed when others don’t know anything about some of the Biblical heroes and parables we study in Sunday School. These are great stories to live by, fables to guide me, and I still use them every day, just to get through the day.
The teachers are only human, often preaching against the very things they do themselves—smoking in the alley after telling us smoking is sinful, telling “dirty” jokes while urging us never to do such a thing, using profanity after cussing us out for doing the same thing, and so on—like real humans! There are exceptional exceptions. Pearl White and Festus Barringer are teachers who are every bit as good as their teachings! How do they do that?
At home, I have been taught that really good people practice what they preach. So I figure church is no place to go in search of really good people. We are told that only Christians can get into heaven, which makes me worry about what happens to heathen babies and Jews and people who have never even heard of Christianity. Of course, Sunday School and Bible School teachers are always annoyed by such notions, so I learn to keep my mouth shut—most of the time. I can open it now, because I understand more about the need to preach what my Mother calls little white lies in order to give people hope and the energy it takes to get through a day…Santa Claus and Jesus give us something to strive for, something positive and benevolent.
So, thanks, Bronnie Nichols, thanks for giving me a standard to live up to. Thanks for setting an example I can at least work toward.
Sorry about not becoming a preacher myself, which Pearl White always assumed I’d do. I may not get into a Christian heaven, but at least I know right from wrong and, on good days, manage to do more right than wrong
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
THE ZEN OF ALL THINGS QWERTY
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THE ZEN OF ALL THINGS QWERTY
Relentless summertime heat competes head-on with drenching summertime humidity. It doesn’t matter which one wins, because we boys of summer know full well that we are the losers either way.
Today, it’s the late 1950′s in memory green. I am sitting in an un-air-conditioned classroom at Tuscaloosa High School, bent over the keys of an old manual typewriter, fingers poised for the starting gun held high by my typing teacher at the head of the class. When the gun goes off, we clacking victims will be off and running, trying to see how many words per minute we can produce without error.
My pal, Jon Charles Palmer, sits next to me at his own machine, staring hopelessly at the keys, acting as if he and I are ready, willing and able to enter the same contest…even though we know that deep down inside we are actually unready, unwilling and unable to accomplish very much.
Jon Charles and I share the same sense of doom. Each day of summer school, we have primarily goofed off, kidded around, passed notes, giggled, stared at out-of-our-league coeds and in every way ignored the typing lessons. We can’t get over the silliness of our situation–having to make up for poor grades by serving out this summer school sentence.
And whenever we look down at the word QWERTY on the keys beneath our fingers, we are overcome with stifled laughter. QWERTY has become our mantra. While prim and efficient coeds apply their practice and studies to the task at hand, Jon Charles and I are acting like the nerdy pranksters we are. And now we will pay the price.
I wipe the sweat from my brow, glance around the room at coeds, teacher, typewriters, shiny-surfaced desks, open windows, and one solitary apple glistening from a corner of the front desk. Wonder which student brought that to class. Why didn’t I think of that? Dang.
The gun goes off, the clickety-clacking ensues, Jon Charles and I go at it with full gusto. He and I are frowning intensely at the keys, even though it is forbidden to look at them while typing. “A professional typist knows where the letters are, does not need to look down,” the teacher pontificates on many occasions.
“Time’s up!” proclaims the warden.
The inmates pause, lean back, gaze at their handiwork. The coeds are pleased and have successfully executed perfect documents. I stare in disbelief at my error-filled sheet of paper and begin to tally my handiwork.
“Fifteen words per minute?” I look at Jon Charles. Jon Charles looks at me, having just about accomplished the same thing.
My career as a typist is over. I barely escape the course with a C average. I continue to be the worst typist in Tuscaloosa County. Until one day, when I become a writer.
Now, at last, I am motivated to type. My newfound career requires me to: Type fast. Type confidently. Type to persistent deadlines. My job is to write and report. I love having the job, receiving the paycheck, seeing my very own words come alive in black and white. I am now the world’s fastest–and most inaccurate–typist and, once I learn to proofread and edit, even my rapidly sloppy typing can be “fixed” to read correctly.
Even Jon Charles Palmer finds his own way as a professional, is eventually motivated to type.
All we need is motivation. A cell block full of heat and humidity and QWERTYness just doesn’t cut it if you’re a 1950′s teenager clueless to the world and tuned solely into your own undisciplined imagination and ungainly body.
And the mystery remains: How do all those coeds appear to keep it together? They seem to know how to stay the course and get the task done, while we guys just meander along, waiting a few more years till QWERTY fades and maturity arises.
This much I know. QWERTY seems more important now, all these decades later, than just about anything else this summer. That’s because QWERTY remains before me each and every day, grinning back at me from the keyboard, reminding me that ninety per cent of life is finding something to giggle at when times are muddled
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast
THAT FAR AWAY LOOK IN YOUR EYES
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THAT FAR AWAY LOOK IN YOUR EYES
You and I are having this serious one-one-one conversation over lunch. As always, our chat is punctuated by anecdotes, laughs, gossip and factoid-sharing. We are having a pleasant time.
At some point in this exchange over edibles, I catch you staring at the top of my head. You do it again, later. Now I’m beginning to wonder whether there’s something atop my pate that is attracting attention. Is there a wild hair? At my age, I do find an occasional errant unclipped intruder. Are you just now noticing how bald and shiny I’ve become? Is there a dab of soap lather missed during my morning shower? Am I so boring that you are drifting into daydreams?
Then, it suddenly occurs to me that the far away look in your eyes doesn’t have anything to do with my head or your attention span. There is a large television screen behind me, hanging from the ceiling. Indeed, there are several such flotillas scattered about the eatery–and just about any eatery I’ve visited lately.
I am looking into your eyes and you are looking into the face of a perspiring athlete on an electronic device. Guess you’ve made your choice. As a test, I halt my story midstream and continue eating in silence. It takes a few seconds for you to avert your gaze and re-join the flesh-and-blood moment. You have that “where were we?” look and I have my quiet bemusement.
The conversation re-boots and we get along well for moments at a time, in between your magnetized meanderings back to the hovering screen.
Well, it’s sighing time, I know you’re going to leave me again. I can see that far away look in your eyes.
They ought to write a song about it
© 2016 A.D. by Jim Reed
http://www.jimreedbooks.com/podcast