RIGHT HERE

“So, where are yah now?” Pause . . . I smile and reply, “I’m right here.” Another pause; you get that puzzled, hollow stare. “No, I know you’re here right now but where’re you from now?” I know it seems I don’t know where I’m from because I’m having to think about it. I have to decide if I concede to convention or be real. I understand that my Normal is comfortable for me but not so much others. I have intelligent, responsible friends who remind me as needed, I move to a different drum. The feeling of being different can either cripple or empower the psyche but sometimes all it does is make you feel isolated. My friend Kirk is waiting for an answer and I’m still thinking. All he really wants is a way into a conversation; how you’ve been, what have you been up to and so far, I haven’t given him anything. Do I cave-in to his version of normal? I could make up a story; that would be fun but someone would out-me. “I’ve been in prison in India for killing cows.”  There would be another pause; “Yeh, bread and water for 11 years, hanging upside down, getting the Chinese water torture. You should’ve been there.” Then, not everyone appreciates my humor and I guess I do move to a different drum. He’s still waiting for an answer.

I often answer that question honestly; “I try not to be from.” Social security, the IRS and your bank require an address where they can send registered mail. If you don’t check your mail now and then, respond to official notices; they get testy. So my driver’s license has an address on it and the IRS has the same one in their file. But my belongings live in another state and most likely, I’m not there either. I don’t want to be defined by where I’m from, if you will. I’m a long way from almost everywhere. I pay my taxes but I’m just a little fish still, bureaucrats with their lines in the water from every state and town where I receive mail think I should belong to them. Taxes are important but even so, we have been nurtured at the nipple of, “Where you from?” It’s about identity and I simply don’t want to be painted into that corner. 

I asked my friend, “Does it really matter?” He chews on that for a few seconds, smiles and says, “No, I guess it doesn’t.” We start talking and we’re into a good conversation. He likes traditional, familiar things, packaged in predictable fashion. He’s lived in the same county all of his life. His kids grew up and moved away but he’s still there. The worst thing that could happen to him is to lose that grounded sense of time and place. I was his football coach a very long time ago. Of all the kids I ever coached, running full speed, he could gather himself physically, drop his hips and extend his body up and through a ball carrier like nobody I know. All I ever taught him was where to line up and that failure is temporary; not to fear failure. He thanked me for being a good role model; I returned the compliment. 

Another former player saw us, came over and slid into the conversation. “Hey Coach, how you been?” I said I was finer than frog hair and we laughed. “Where are you now?” Pause. . .I looked at Kirk, we both smiled. “I’m right here.” You know what comes nest. “No, where do you live?” Kirk leans forward and asks, “Does it really matter?” In the next breath we were rehashing the ’75 White Pigeon game. We won in three overtimes on an automatic call between me, the QB and the center. If they lined up like we thought they would, the call was, 4-2nd man, a power play to the right. If the nose-man shifted to either side, then we snap the ball on the ‘Goose’ (as soon as QB’s hands go in) without a snap signal; and QB sneak in the gap they give us. Touchdown! We’re League Champs. Maybe the slickest coaching call I ever made. Forty years after the fact we were all leaning back in our chairs, hooting, little boys again. Nobody cared at all where I was from. 

Today I’m in a coffee shop in Grand Haven, Michigan. It’s as good a place to be from as I can manage. I think the, ‘WHERE YOU FROM - WHO’S YOUR MAMA” stuff is simply a Stone Age remnant. l think we do it without thinking, like dogs that circle before they lie down. We don’t need it any more but old habits are hard to break.