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Ok, ok, I’ll do it again!

People have heard I once did a treatise on hugging, and they’ve asked me to send it to them. To save time and pain, and because I keep forgetting, here it is again:

I am a hugger.

Not a mugger, not a lugger, not a slugger…but a hugger.

I generally keep my emotional and/or physical distance from strangers, but when I really like somebody, and when it is safe to do so, I tend to greet them with a hug—or at least a handshake.

Over the decades, I’ve evolved. One of the few advantages of aging is that I now see patterns in things, cause-and-effect phenomena in things…so that my behavior has subtly shifted.

A few things I’ve learned about hugging:

1.  Some people respond readily to a quick hug and seem flushed with pleasure at this nice surprise.

2.  Some people respond but quickly back away, as if they don’t know what to do after a hug.

3.  Some people stiffen and don’t respond to the hug. These are folks I won’t hug again, unless they initiate it.

4.  Some people back away and will do anything to avoid a hug in the first place.

5.  Some people hug a little too long and make me want to back away.

6.  Some people, at first reluctant at each hug, now approach me as if they will actually miss the hug if I don’t provide it.

7.  Some guys are huggable, but others try to avoid it because, well, they don’t think it’s guyish. These are often older or elderly guys, whose generation doesn’t cater to this kind of behavior.

8.  Some people exude a kind of sensuousness when I hug them, so I tend not to try to hug them again, lest something happens. This used to occur a lot more when I was young…with sometimes pleasant results. No more—I’ve been happily monogamous for many decades.

Even after studying hugging for sixty years, I still don’t know why most huggers pat each other on the back.  Maybe it’s a kind of sign language that says, “Just hugging! Nothing more is meant!”

Anyhow, there’s lots of horror and sorrow and grief in the world that’s beyond my control. Maybe hugging is something I can do that reminds me that people can be pleasant to one another, even when they can’t think of anything comforting to say aloud

(c) 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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No-one knows what goes on behind closed doors. Or closed minds.

Despite the fact that my—and your—profusely exposed inner and outer Activities of Daily Living are splattered all over the Internet by way of

texting

blogging

blasting 

emailing

video-ing

snoopsurveillance

dronecamera-ing

TheTube

radio

streaming

hidden mics

loose lips

snarky gossip

…despite having my heretofore secret life spread-eagled to the ethos for anybody—or nobody—to examine, there are still many cloisterd corners of Me that are mine and mine alone—and you can’t access them without my permission.

You can’t hack most of my private being. Just try and see what doesn’t happen.

Take Garfield underpants, for example.

Many moons and suns ago, my family birthday-gifted me with a pair of Garfield underpants, decorated with hearts and Garfields. Not President Garfield, just Garfield the cartoon cat.

Life changed for me that day.

From then on, at least one day a week, I donned my Garfield underpants, put on the rest of my clothes, and set forth into the workday playday world to conquer or be conquered by circumstance or collusion, by accident or by conspiracy.

On my Garfield days, each time a crisis arose, I could handle it without losing it. If the chaos or confusion around me became extreme, I just looked inward, remembered the fact that out of sight of the wolves and bullies, my Garfield underwear could still make me smile.

I always knew something the attackers and whiners could not know. Garfield and I could get through the day unscathed, simply because we shared a secret goofiness that repeled all attacks of logic, overriding and distraction by others.

Some people were disturbed by my slight smile that could not be wiped away. Some got more agitated the better I felt. Some took inspiration from my attitude and calmed down and began finding reasons to smile themselves.

And if anybody ever asked what my secret was, I had the option to share or the option to hold back. No pop-up or spam or privacy search could break through and try to market me into purchasing six more pairs of Garfield underpants.

If this worked, why am I revealing all this right now? I’m not telling, but here’s a hint—eventually, the Garfield underpants wore out and I had to find another secret way to fend off the hornet’s nests. Now I have a new tool for survival. And the thing that makes me smile today is the fact that I’m the only person in the universe who knows what that is.

Time for you to go out and find some Garfield underpants for yourself. Keep a slight smile on your face and it’ll drive your enemies crazy while comforting your friends

(c) 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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The wizened old rare-book dealer emits an un-self-couscious sigh as he walks his hoarded aisles and straightens up what avid customers have re-arranged in their quest for just the right titles to adopt. He doesn’t know his sighs have been noticed by treasure hunters two rows over. Indeed, he is not even aware that he has sighed.

One collector is on hands and knees in front of the poetry section of the store, riffling through assorted titles in search of a book that, to the dealer, is in plain view. The dealer doesn’t speak up out of respect for the customer’s self-esteem. He figures that, should this woman get frustrated enough, she’ll wind up asking for the book, which he will gently fetch from the shelf and offer to her, thus curing her sigh attack.

A man rushes into the shop, proferring a one-dollar bill and asking for parking meter change. He sighs loudly, waiting for a palmful of quarters, which the shopkeeper gladly hands him in hope that he’ll return and browse. As the street man rushes out, the dealer suppresses a sigh, knowing from three decades of experience that he’ll probably never see this man again, and that the man will never realize he’s not even said, “Thank you!”

A young woman sequesters herself in the corner by mail boxes filled with letters and diaries and postcards, reading century-old love letters written by people whose lives are long past living but whose words still ring true and honest. She sighs sweetly, wishing that she could go back in time for just a minute, simply to tell the authors that she, at least, appreciates their desires and longings and wishes both fulfilled and unfulfilled.

Later, a four-year-old tagalong customer sighs loudly as she gazes at the basket of MoonPies and DumDums, her taste buds focusing all attention on the trove. Hearing her sigh, the bookdealer gives her one of each goody, making sure she takes the time to select the exactly correct flavor of the lollipop, the exact correct favorite that she just knows is better than all the flavors of the world.

One beyond-middle-age browser hastens to the front of the store, holding aloft the grail he’s been looking for since youth, a copy of A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, “the funniest book ever written,” he exclaims, with a sigh of satisfaction.

Later in the day, when all living beings but the book dealer have departed, he listens to what should be the Quiet, but all he can hear are the sighs and whispers of thousands of bookie souls enjoying their peace, cherishing their own printed words and images, and awaiting the next flux of browsers who themselves will be unobtrusively browsed and examined by the books, the books who become observers of the 21st-century world they notice, bemused

(c) 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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Just who are you talking to when you talk to me? Who are you looking at?

Just wondering.

You used to think of Santa Claus when you saw me. Up till a decade ago, people would stop to say, “Anybody ever tell you you look like Santa Claus?” or “Have you ever been asked to play Santa Claus?” or (via a young child, in awe) “Are you Santa Claus?”

It used to be fun, being asked those questions. It gave me a chance to practice my wisecracks, which, funny or not, I still like to make. My answers depended upon my mood or on whatever was floating to the top in my mind at the time: “Yes, I’ve been asked to play Santa, but that would be disingenuous, since I really am Santa!” or “Yes, people ask me whether I know I look like Santa, and the fact is, I really would like to be Santa—not a fake Santa with a fake beard, but the really honest-to-goodness one and only Santa!” or “No, I’m not Santa Claus, but I know Santa…and he’s asked me to make a list and check it twice, and find out just who is naughty or nice.” (This used to impress kids and make them tiptoe around me.”)

Just a few years later, you would think of Ernest Hemingway when you spied me in the shop among all those dusty, daring books. “Anybody ever tell you you look like Ernest Hemingway?” you’d ask. I’d often reply, “Maybe Jed Clampett, but never Hemingway.” or “You mean do I look just like a geezer with a beard?” or “Who is this Ernest Hemingway of whom you speak?”

Then, during the most recent past, you think of George Carlin when I pass by. “Anybody ever tell you you look like George Carlin?” or “Did you know you look like George Carlin?” or (before Carlin died) “Are you George Carlin?” or ”Can I have your autograph?” or ”Oh, you’re just kidding—I know you are George Carlin!” Some people just make up their minds and can’t be stopped.

You talkin’ to me? You lookin’ at me?

And what will you be reminded of when you see me years from now?

Maybe “Anybody ever tell you you look like the Cryptkeeper?” or “Did you play the Cryptkeeper?” or “Didn’t I see you in that movie…oh, never mind.”

I don’t know why people think of someone else when they see me, but I’ll take it as a compliment, since I am someone, and so are you! It’s just that I’m not someone else, I’m just who I am. And so are you.

Next time you see me, ask me who I think you remind me of. Let’s get creative and make sure we stamp each other with the gentle recognition that we are…well, maybe we are everybody, and everybody is us

(c) 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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I’m beneath my mother’s old quilt, flashlight pillow-propped and back-up D-cell batteries at hand, so that I can read into the post-curfew night without interruption. The book I am absorbing is The Moon Pool by Abraham Merritt, and it has already captured me by inspiring the first full-color dreams of my subteen life, here in the ‘burbs of old Tuscaloosa in the 1950′s.

A. Merritt is good, very good, at making me suspend day-to-day logic and supplant it with the newly-formed logic of science fantasy. He’s taking me by ship to ancient South Sea islands and en route injecting those wonderful dreams into my imagination.

Part of me, obscured beneath the limp pieced fabrics, part of me knows things like this can’t really happen in the textured surfaces and cold interiors of everyday life; but another part of me, free-falling with the book’s characters into a bottomless cave pit, part of me knows that reality is just another way of living life. I know early on that I can live my life on many levels at once, and that reality is just one way of getting through the day. This is my nighttime reality—the supercharged but harmless-appearing book that I hold in my young hands.

Abraham Merritt, under his pen name, A. Merritt, beckons me to a world into which I can utterly lose myself, but, strangely and paradoxically, a world from which I can escape at will, simply by closing the book—which gives me time to catch my breath and ponder on the activities therein.

Passages like this keep me turning the pages, night after night:

The tinkling music was louder still. It pierced the ears with a shower of tiny lances; it made the heart beat  jubilantly—and checked it dolorously. It closed the throat with a throb of rapture and gripped it tight with the hand of infinite sorrow!

Came to me now a murmuring cry, stilling the crystal notes. It was articulate—but as though from something utterly foreign to this world. The ear took the cry and translated it with conscious labour into the sounds of earth. And even as it compassed, the brain shrank from it irresistiblly, and simultaneously it seemed reached toward it with irresistible eagerness…

This pulp fiction tome and others of its time stretched my vocabulary, multiplied my ideas, focused my desire to tell my own tales someday. It made me aware of how harmless little marks called alphabet and numbers could act as magic wands, spewing forth images and abstractions that in no way existed if you blinked and stared at them one by one. How remarkable, that tiny black and white symbols could metamorphose into microscopic and macroscopic essences without ever leaving the pages!

Hiding under my mother’s quilt, reading the words of A. Merritt and hundreds of other writers, I educated myself—or, rather, I allowed the constant imaginings of others to educate me— about the possibilities of life  and storytelling.

And I never for a second forgot that each symbol, each word, each sentence, thought, paragraph, chapter, each book, came out of practically nothing—just marks on pages.

Thinking about this through the years makes me realize even today that I make up my own existence, I interpret each symbol in my own way, I myself am in charge of whether I am happy, frightened, sad, ecstatic, critical, mad.

Reading a wonderful book was and is like splattering my face with ice water, awakening me to the plain fact at hand—the fact that, no matter how I’d like to blame the cosmos for my problems, I myself am responsible for the outcome. I can slam the book shut any moment, or I can peek at its contents a bit at a time till all is digestible and accepted.

And I can re-charge any book, re-read any book, any time I choose. All it takes is an old quilt, a flashlight, and a willingness to drop out of this reality for a brief excursion to sometime else

(c) 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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I wonder what the world would be like if I could be in total charge for a day? If everyone paid attention and followed my instructions, my dictates, for a day?

What would happen during that magical hiatus, you ask?

Well, the list is humongous, but here are a few highlights.

If I were in charge for one day:

Everybody would get enough to eat.

Torturers would have to release the tortured.

No unfriendly shots would be fired.

Wars would truce themselves up and enemies would party together.

Bullies would treat their victims with kindness.

Snarky social media comments would become gentle and loving.

Abusers would shower the abused with favors.

Smokers would visit and console lung cancer patients.

Bigots would do lunch with people they hate but have never met.

Dog owners would not allow their pets to poop on my lawn.

The unforgiving would be forgiven and would also learn how beautiful it is to forgive.

Criticizers would see the wonder in only complimenting.

Shopping center parents would have to restrain themselves from slapping their kids.

Each of us would pick up and discard just one piece of trash we’d ordinarily avoid.

…and so on and so forth, as my neighbor Margaret Selman always used to say.

It wouldn’t be such a bad thing, you know, living in a world controlled by me—for a day. Mainly, because things could go back to the way they were in just 24 hours, no harm done. If people didn’t like my idea of a break, they could just go back to living their lives, forgetting what just happened.

But what if some folks liked what occurred? They just might make a few adjustments and find some better way of getting through it all. Maybe? Just maybe?

It would be an experiment designed to give pause for thought, let folks off the hook and off everyone else’s case for a few hours, lift the burden of hardship or responsibility or hopelessness for a moment.

It would be nice to see whether the one-day hiatus would help people realize what life could be like, if only

 (c) 2013 A.D. by Jim Reed

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