LUSTING FOR RELEVANCE

"I've still got a lot of tread on the tires.": a line I heard while sort of half listening to an interview with a 31 year old NFL running back in response to a question about how much longer he would play.

There's an ad running now selling something; it features Dan Marino (former Miami Dolphins QB), Emmitt Smith (former Dallas Cowboys RB) and a few others of that ilk. They are watching a game and imagining the possiblity of playing again.

I don't know that I could ever say about anything in my life that "I've got game." I played some decent drums back in the day but I'm not ready to get-the-band-back-together and play the casino circuit. While the temptation or the call to return to some youthful pursuit stirs not in my soul, I still feel like there's a little tread left on the tires.

Vanna has signed up for at least two more years of letter-flipping even though Pat will be making his final spin soon. Maybe the last puzzle will be from the category "Rhetorical Questions", and the puzzle: W_Y, V_NN_, W_Y?

She might as well keep spinning though. At 66, she's a youngster compared to her viewing audience and many of our politicians.

Speaking of, did you see that Mitt Romney is checking it in (for now)? I hate to see this. Mitt is one of the more sane and ethical R's on The Hill (in my highly partisan mind).

One of my favorite writers/observers, David Brooks, wrote:

"I admire him for deciding to step down at the senatorially young age of 76. As we’ve all come to see, the hunger for continued relevance is the corroding lust that devours the very old. Romney stands for the valuable idea that there are things more important in life than politics and winning elections."

WAIT! What did David say there?! "...the hunger for continued relevance is the corroding lust that devours the very old."

To quote the aging but still highly relevant Steve Martin, "Well, exccccuuussseee me!"

What would he have us do? Strive for irrelevance? Maybe what he's saying is that we, of a higher age, should just accept and maybe even embrace our blossoming irrelevance.

I think this is accurate: if you symbolically drive me across wet sand maybe you'll see subtle marking left behind by some remnant of remaining tread. When my oldest GrandGirl thanks me for being in the stands on a Friday night for the sole purpose of seeing her do her Pom Squad thing, I feel relevant. When I'm called on to be a part of an interview by a GrandGirl doing a report on 9-11, when I'm invited to "play" Barbie or Chutes and Ladders, when my youngest Grand hands me the other X-Box controller, inviting me to play some Star Wars game, and all I can do is make my guy jump up and down, somehow I still feel relevant just sitting between him and his big brother.

jeremiah, our youngest grand. photo by his uncle corey.

I get David Brooks’ point. I thought about it as I started composing this blog post. Why am I still doing this blog thing? The hunger for relevance? When I kicked it off ten years ago that was part of it. But for now, it's just fun and it gives me something to do. I like putting words together, shaping thoughts, especially since there is no teacher with a red pencil marking my poor punctuation choices. Circling the participles I may have left dangling, I know they meant well. When I write I pay more attention to life and I think a little deeper. And, who knows, maybe something I write might inspire or humor or disturb; granting a momentary relevance.

That's enough for now.

MORE THAN A FAST CAR

SOMETIMES I CLOSE MY EYES. Maybe if I don't see it, it's not real. Usually though, I want to be able to see. I think most folks do. "I can't see!" is one of the first frustrations we learn to express as kids.

Remember those early TV consoles built to look like furniture, the ones where the picture tube was six-ish inches off the floor? Invariably, there would be a younger sibling messing around right in your field of view just as Lassie was about to save Timmy's backside for the 997th time. "But Mom, I can't see! That's why I gently nudged him out of the way with my foot."

This post isn't about the physical ability to functionally see with our eyeballs, rods, cones, etc. It's about sensing, looking behind the curtain, having a crystal ball, having vision in the big--you might say--biblical way.

We need (or think we need) to see--the whole picture. I also like to be able to see far enough ahead to know that things will resolve well. Fifties and Sixties TV gave us that, but real life is more; real.

I worked with teenagers for most of my adult life. I consider it a privilge to have had that calling. It was not all pizza and volleyball though. The worst parts sprung from seeing the heartbreak; knowing the stories of those who had been dealt a crappy hand. In most all of those lives there was an inability to see: to see what could be, to see a way out or through, to see there is some goodness and beauty somewhere. The lack of vision didn't come from a lack of desire. Sometimes the weight of life makes us nearsighted or blinded.

Whether we can see around the corner, or beyond the moment, or not, we need to know that there's a way out, something or someone that will deliver us somewhere else, something to get us unstuck--call it rescue. We don't know where it might take us, but sometimes we just need to be elsewhere and a way to get there. Maybe we shouldn't think of this as an escape though. When we're trying to escape we might choose poorly, escaping by means of self-harm, self-loathing or desperation.

A while back, March 26, 2023, I wrote a post called GIRL POWER. It is a theme for me to try to do something that is affirming and encouraging to young women. Since then I've written a few times on the subject. Today, I'm writing another. This is for me the tough kind of writing, where each word needs to mean something. I can feel Hemingway's desire to be able to write "one true sentence".

As I oftern do, I want to use the words of another; a poet. Someone who sees this life from a deeper vision than I have. This time the young lady's name is Tracy Chapman. The words are lyrics to her song, "Fast Car". It is a song, that along with Janis Ian's "At Seventeen", is torturous. It is real and raw and paints a picture we need to spend time pondering. My hope is that when I have done that, I will be kinder, more attuned, more resolved, more focused on the things that really matter.

I've included the lyrics here so that Tracy can have the last word. But, PLEASE PLEASE; don't just read these. Go to YouTube and listen to her sing it. CLICK HERE.

---

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove

You got a fast car
I got a plan to get us outta here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money
Won't have to drive too far
Just 'cross the border and into the city
You and I can both get jobs
Finally see what it means to be living

See, my old man's got a problem
He lives with a bottle, that's the way it is
He says his body's too old for working
His body's too young to look like his
When mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said, "Somebody's gotta take care of him"
So I quit school and that's what I did

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so we can fly away?
We gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
We go cruising, entertain ourselves
You still ain't got a job
And I work in a market as a checkout girl
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
We'll move out of the shelter
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinkin' late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I'd always hoped for better
Thought maybe together, you and me'd find it
I got no plans, I ain't going nowhere
So take your fast car and keep on driving

So I remember when we were driving, driving in your car
Speed so fast, I felt like I was drunk
City lights lay out before us
And your arm felt nice wrapped 'round my shoulder
And I-I, had a feeling that I belonged
I-I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way

---

For a fleeting moment she felt a couple of those life essentials, the ones everyone deserves: that I belong, that I could be someone.

"Search my heart O God" for prejudice, for misogyny, for racism, for deceit, for arrogance. Help me to see in myself the stuff that I do not want to admit is there. Help me to see the hurting, the injustice, the abuser and the abused. And grant me the courage and honesty to do something and say something.

IT'S LIKE RIDING A BIKE

ONCE YOU'VE LEARNED, you never forget. Funny thing: here at seventy-something, I found there are more and more things that my mind thinks it remembers like it was yesterday, but my body doesn't seem to recall having ever done that. E.g.: Someone told me the other day that old people forget how to skip. My mind knows what skipping is. I know it when I see it. If a kid comes skipping along I might say, "You're a good skipper."

BUT, do I have the muscle memory to do it? After hearing this rumor, I decided to try it. I waited until I was home alone and certain no one was watching. I had my phone nearby in case I needed to crawl to it to call nine-eleven.

LARRY’S BIKE SHOP. SHAWNEE, OKLAHOMA

What do you know? I can still skip.

I can still feed myself. I can still play my drum set, including the marching cadences from my high school days in the Jenks Trojan Marching Band. I can still type and play a decent game of ping pong.

BUT, what happens if we forget rudimentary stuff?

In a book for tweens called, NEVERFORGOTTEN, the idea of forgetting-how is explored. Here's a portion of a review I read of the book:

In this dual-language novella, the Colombian author Alejandra Algorta tells the story of Fabio, whose mother, a baker, trades eight bags of homemade bread for a girl’s salmon-colored bike. She removes the handlebar ribbons and gives the bike to Fabio. His bus driver father teaches him to ride, assuring Fabio as he runs behind the bike, “Even if I let you go, I won’t let you go.”

Fabio overcomes the stigma of the girl-bike provenance, and discovers his worth and identity. On the bike, he delivers his mother’s bread, empowered. He has been released from Bogotá’s outskirts and from his pedestrian neighborhood to the dust and danger of the monster city, his world new and exciting. “Strangely for Fabio,” Algorta writes, “the neighborhood through which he journeyed on his bicycle was much more illuminated than the one he walked, was warmer, more fleeting, softer, more bird than cage.”

Now, on wheels, he is flying and free, and often trailed by a pack of children on their own bikes. Within a few years, as he grows stronger and his intuitions on the bicycle flourish, he becomes a mythical leader. It is whispered that he is “half boy and half bicycle.”

Unexpectedly and without explanation, he wakes one morning and has forgotten how to pedal. In front of an audience of bicycle-children, he falls repeatedly. Puzzled and humiliated, he hides beneath his bed, trying to determine the cause. Has he forgotten the mechanics of pedaling because his father taught him to ride on an inauspicious day — Wednesday? Or because the bicycle is a pinkish orange, a color meant for girls only? Could this new inability be the result of never having learned to ride with training wheels first, like other children, a step that might have been integral to memory? No matter the reason, he is now inept and defeated, his power replaced with fear. His father and mother reassure him that “what the body knows, it knows forever.” But Fabio declares that this is a lie. He is proof. When he forgets the thing that everyone says is unforgettable, he begins to question everything known in his world, including how to carry on.

---

I'm reluctant to share the source of this review for fear it will waken some fundamentalist who will question why a boy is riding a "girl" bike and then gather up all the copies of the book and burn them. Oh well. You can read the review in the NYT by clicking here.

Apparently, sarcasm and saltiness are unforgettable skills as well.

Here's the next question. Just because I still remember how to ride a bike; should I? I'm not as agile, responsive and quick as I once was. My core strength should no longer be called a strength. I'm pondering these deep issues because I'm thinking of getting one of these new-fangled electric bikes; e-bikes.

Is this just a pedal-assisted road on a fool's errand?. I promise to wear a helmet and something in a nice florescent green. If things don't go well; according to my driver's license, I am an organ donor. Not that I have anything anyone would want.

We just made a road trip through Iowa. The rolling hills of corn on farm after farm are beautiful. Why are the farms and homes of Iowa so neat and maintained? Just curious.

Occasionally we would drive through an Amish settlement. Clotheslines displayed an artist's pallet full of pastel garments drying in the sun against a backgound of deep green meeting deep blue at the horizon line. On the shoulder of the highway black buggies were pulled by single horses. And look. There's an e-bike store. WAIT! What in the barn-raising world is an e-bike store doing out here in the middle of modernity-rejection?!?!

Turns out e-bikes have been approved for use in many Amish communities. The young people have fully embraced them. If you're wondering: they wear their straw hats instead of helmets. You have to draw the line somewhere.

Where is the line for this old curmudgeon when it comes to buying and riding an e-bike? It could be healthy. Some pedalling is required. It could be severly unhealthy. I hopefully have set my affairs so that my family will be taken care of. As I'm typing this the outside temp is 99F with 110% humidity, which according to my calculations means a "feels-like" temperature of hell. This whole e-bike thing sounded a lot more fun that day in Iowa when it was in the seventies.

I'm compelled to do something that feels like moving forward, even if it's downhill or pedal-assisted. Inertia is heavy and I can't let the new and different paralyze me. Remember the last line I shared from the review of the book about Fabio and his bicycle: "When he forgets the thing that everyone says is unforgettable, he begins to question everything known in his world, including how to carry on."

I can't remember ever not-knowing how to ride a bike, or swim, or drive a stick shift, or tell if a watermelon is ripe before cutting it open. It seems a shame to not put all that knowledge to good use.

Back in my early bike-riding days I was given certain limits. I was not to leave Quincy Ave, the street where we lived and go out on 71st street. I was not to ride my bike to the river.

Did I ever cross 71st or go to the river? Of course.

Today, my bike riding limits are set by my endurance and energy level, and abhorrence to heat. I have a very cool cruiser style bike but it's a single speed. Our house sits on a rise. No matter which direction I ride I have to climb a hill to get back home. An e-bike would allow me to ride to the metaphorical river once again. It sounds so fun and transgressional. Why not? After all: once you learn...

DAYTRIPPIN'

"WHAT'S NEXT, I don't know."

I PENNED THOSE FIVE WORDS into a sentence, hoping that in saying them out loud an answer might come. It was just over one year ago, May 30, 2022. In these days (the days of my 8th decade), things like sanity and certainty are elusive. Most times that doesn't matter. The heft of the outcome from the decisions I make these days is small. My fashion-curious grandgirl asked the other day: "Why do you wear a black t-shirt, shorts and Birkenstocks almost every day?" I explained that having a uniform means one less decision I have to make.

THOSE FIVE WORDS were in a post I wrote for this blog called, "When the End Is A Beginning". It was a post about me selling our beautiful Airstream. It was a decision I made in the moment, basically to stroke the male need to prove we can make a really good deal--sort of pull one over on the other guy. I did put our Airstream out there in the marketplace for a price I didn't think anyone would pay. The next day it was gone. I say that as if it was simple, rather than as the gut-wrenching, remorse-filled decision it was. THAT'S WHY I WEAR A BLACK T-SHIRT, SHORTS AND BIRKENSTOCKS EVERY DING-DONG DAY, MISSY! I CAN'T BE TRUSTED TO MAKE IMPORTANT DECISIONS.

MALACHI, NORA (CAPTAIN OF THE FASHON POLICE) AND JEREMIAH. WATCHING A MOVIE TOGETHER

Well, a year and a few weeks later: we're back baby, back in the RV game; not the Airstream game, but the trailer for traveling one. We had made the choice of next RV and went to the dealership yesterday to seal the deal. We had our two grandguys with us: Malachi (6) and Jeremiah (3). While I went in to the Sales Manager's office to strike a deal that would make the boys proud of their Pops, they thoroughly examined every RV on the showroom floor.

The Manager pushed a contract across the desk in front of me. I looked at it. I looked at him. I marked through his number and wrote my own! An offer I knew he would need to take to the senior-sales-manager-in-charge-of-rejecting-stupid-offers.

"We can do that," he said enthusiastically.

WHAT?! He could have at least given me the courtesy of saying, "Ooooo, I don't know Mr. Pops. You drive a hard bargain. How about we throw in a sewer hose and call it good?"

No! He took my first offer, like I had just lobbed a soft ball to any girl on the Oklahoma University 3-peat National Champs softball team.

We loaded up in the truck and headed to Chick-fil-a where I knew I would be treated with respect and the boys knew they would get a "toy" (which I tried unsuccessfully to talk them into trading in for an ice cream cone which I knew I would get a bite of).

On the way there, the 3-year old was singing, "This girl is on fire" by Alicia Keyes at the top of his lungs; the 6-year old said, "I remember your other trailer. It was SILVER." My Amazing-Missus and I looked at each other and laughed to keep from crying. Not only is the new home-on-wheels not silver, some marketing genius had the brilliant idea to name it a Micro-Minnie-Winnie. She is cute, I'll giver her that. And I know she will help us to have great fun and memories.

The last step on the trail of buying an RV at this dealership is the "walk-through" by our "camping advisor". He began by saying, "Now I'm going to go over things as if you've never owned a travel trailer (or have more than a third-grade education)."

But I have! I wanted to shout. Two shiny, silver Airstreams in fact. But, I listened and nodded while he spoke to me like I was a total idiot. Finally he asked me to sign his report card proving that he had explained, disclaimed, warned, and checked all the boxes. Under my signature was a line for me to put my email address. He had highlighted the word "REQUIRED".

ME: Why is this required, and by whom, and for whose benefit, because I don't see any benefit other adding a lot more garbage to my inbox?

"Camp Advisor": I'm required to get an email so we can send you a survey. Oh, and when you fill out the survey be sure to give us a 9 or 10 on the last question: "How likely are you to recommend this dealer to a friend?"

[A better question would probably be: what is the likelihood that anyone would ever ask you to recommend an RV dealership? ANSWER: Slim to zero.]

I was reminded of that time I begged my geometry teacher to give me a C- even though I would still be hard-pressed to tell you the difference between an obtuse and an isosceles triangle.

The camp advisor continued: "Anything lower than a 9 is considered a failing grade." I didn't ask him what would happen in that case. I didn't care, and Mimi was still chasing the boys around the showroom floor. I told him that grading on a customer service curve with other RV dealers, used car dealers, and politicans, I would give him a 9- with a needs to improve note that he should have his mother sign and forward to the dubious email address I had just put on the report card.

He was unhumored and done with me. His last box was checked.

Off to Chick-fil-a for lunch. I was thinking: if I owned an RV dealership I would only hire people that had worked at a Chick-fil-a, where they don't beg for good reviews. Quality service is just the modus operandi there. Recently, I ordered through the CFA app and checked the box to pick it up in the drive through. As always they were waiting for me. Our attendant was a chubby young guy with really rosy cheeks. I pulled forward and rolled down my window. "Are you Pops?" he asked. I told him I was. "When I saw your name on the order, I thought to myself I hope Pops comes to my lane."

Do they teach that stuff at CFA school or do they just hire people with that service propensity? I felt bad about my attitude at the dealership. I know that my camping advisor is a just guy making a living, a good person, that works in an environment wrought with quotas and unattainable sales goals, who knows his next performance review rests on stuff like getting a 9 or a 10 on that stupid card.

Harry if you're reading this, my email is hey.pops.hey@gmail.com. I hope you get all 9s or 10s.

And, if Harry were here to say, Thank You. I would say, "It's my pleasure. Pull forward please."