MAKE ME SMILE

Once in a while I will come up with something that reminds me of Andy Rooney. I have featured Andy in this blog several times and here I go again. A world class journalist and commentator, he finished his career with CBS magazine program, 60 Minutes. His contribution came at the end of the show with, “A Few Minutes With Andy.” That’s just what it was, a few (3) minutes. Take an idea, give it a beginning, a middle and an end and leave ‘em smiling; seems easy enough but not so fast. It’s not easy at all. But Andy was the best. I don’t try to imitate his style but sometimes after I’ve done a short piece, let it rest a few days and come back to it, I get a deja vu vibe from the 11 year-old who is trapped inside my head. He sends me a kind of neural-net text message: “Hey, that was almost Roonish!” I feel really good when Andy and I come up in the same thought. The text source was me but not the conscious me.  I think that rules out ego. I don’t know about you but I don’t get to feel one way or another at will. Feelings announce themselves without permission. By the time you diagnose the emotion, you are the recipient and there is no return address. 

The last time I got the ‘Feel-Good’ feeling was day before yesterday. The bird feeder outside my kitchen window was like Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, bare. So I dug out suet cakes and sunflower seeds, set up the ladder, did my high wire balancing routine; all food in the feeder, no spills, no falling off the ladder. After putting things away, back inside my kitchen, the birds must have been hiding, waiting because there were all jousting for a spot on the perches. There it was, the Feel-Good feel. 

When my eyesight was 20-20 I knew them all by name at 100’, on a perch or in the air. Now I need binoculars but they haven’t changed. My favorites are the ones who frequent my patio. I don’t know if I favor the nuthatch or the red bellied woodpecker but either way, when they show up I smile. A pair of titmice went upside down on the peanut feeder and if you had been there you would have matched my toothy grin. By definition, happiness is a feeling or emotion that conveys pleasure or contentment. I think it is my nature to be mostly satisfied and content but my birds take me there even on a bad day. Then again, maybe they aren't mine after all, maybe I'm their human?