At eighteen my parents thought my life trajectory would parallel that of the steam ship Titanic. My high school diploma demonstrated the Peter Principle to perfection. Self absorbed I graduated neither learned, ambitious, reliable nor skilled but I did lack discipline (humor). The thought of working a mundane job for minimum wage was unthinkable. There was a girl who would hold my hand but otherwise, if I did’t have anything then I didn’t want anything. I was the prodigal son, reluctant to leave the nest. The folly of my growing up left me neither ashamed nor proud, it just was.
I start this way, not as a precursor to the rest of the story but as a reminder that all of us live out our own story and it begins somewhere, it has to. I am convinced this life is driven by struggle more than reward. One’s place in time is not negotiable; wherever you thought you were going, when it is that you find yourself, wherever that may be, there you are. Like beads on a string, my years add up to eighty two, something I think about a lot. When your body can’t keep up like you think it should it’s not a choice.
So as much as it feels like (hung out to dry) my plate is full. I earned my pay in another profession but I identify as a writer and storyteller. All the reading, writing, shuffling ideas, I have a lot to work with. I employ words and phrases like my mother did her yarn and knitting needles. So no surprise when I take language to task for what it should convey and how that makes us feel. Storytelling might be dismissed as clowns reciting silly rhymes to preschoolers. If one thinks Story need be childlike and banal then it would seem so. But without Story there would be no history, no tradition, no humor, little more than yes & no. There would be no way to answer the simple question; Why? Human beings are storytellers, all of us, since the day we first put three words together.
The Titanic metaphor was good but I am still afloat. I finally learned to read, how to work and I’ve never been in so deep I couldn’t make my way. In a nutshell, that is my story. Like a fiber in a thread, woven into a fabric, sewn into a tapestry, my little rhyme is a very small part of a larger work. Still, that little rhyme is all I can muster. It began somewhere, somehow, under circumstances not of my choosing. You get what you get and go from there. If we are lucky we grow with experience. Good luck would seem too much to hope for but sometimes we flourish in spite of ourselves. I would agree with Lefty Gomez, New York Yankees’ Hall of Fame pitcher who said, “I’d rather be lucky than good.”
I start this way, not as a precursor to the rest of the story but as a reminder that all of us live out our own story and it begins somewhere, it has to. I am convinced this life is driven by struggle more than reward. One’s place in time is not negotiable; wherever you thought you were going, when it is that you find yourself, wherever that may be, there you are. Like beads on a string, my years add up to eighty two, something I think about a lot. When your body can’t keep up like you think it should it’s not a choice.
So as much as it feels like (hung out to dry) my plate is full. I earned my pay in another profession but I identify as a writer and storyteller. All the reading, writing, shuffling ideas, I have a lot to work with. I employ words and phrases like my mother did her yarn and knitting needles. So no surprise when I take language to task for what it should convey and how that makes us feel. Storytelling might be dismissed as clowns reciting silly rhymes to preschoolers. If one thinks Story need be childlike and banal then it would seem so. But without Story there would be no history, no tradition, no humor, little more than yes & no. There would be no way to answer the simple question; Why? Human beings are storytellers, all of us, since the day we first put three words together.
The Titanic metaphor was good but I am still afloat. I finally learned to read, how to work and I’ve never been in so deep I couldn’t make my way. In a nutshell, that is my story. Like a fiber in a thread, woven into a fabric, sewn into a tapestry, my little rhyme is a very small part of a larger work. Still, that little rhyme is all I can muster. It began somewhere, somehow, under circumstances not of my choosing. You get what you get and go from there. If we are lucky we grow with experience. Good luck would seem too much to hope for but sometimes we flourish in spite of ourselves. I would agree with Lefty Gomez, New York Yankees’ Hall of Fame pitcher who said, “I’d rather be lucky than good.”
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