Well!

Thirty-six, huh? And he walks without a cane? No, really. Congratulations! I’m glad you didn’t disqualify someone just because he’s got a few miles on him. How is it that someone you weren’t expecting to date became someone you fell hard for?

Maybe what I’m really asking is: How did he do it?

Well?

While I would love to have someone hold me like she was holding on to life itself, she’d also have to know when to let me go -- like after I’ve eaten too much macaroni and cheese! I dream that someone someday will “literally shudder,” as you do for your fellow, when she can’t be near me. But I want her to have the space to enjoy the absences that will make her heart to grow fonder.

So he’s got an ex-wife and young daughter. You’re right; we all have baggage. I’m 36 and have never been married. What’s up with that? Plus, I have more duffle bags than I will ever need. The trick with baggage is knowing which stuff you have to sort through and deal with and which stuff you can throw away.

But so many of the duffle bags have cool logos on them!

Again with the letting go. It’s my theme lately. I’ve been trying to “reduce,” as I call it. That’s also the euphemism doctors use on women pregnant with triplets when they want them to abort one of the fetuses to give the others a better chance of surviving.

Things I don’t need anymore someone shopping at a local Goodwill store might. I told you before about getting rid of my records. I gave my cassette tapes away yesterday; the store bought ones, anyway. Ones I made myself I donated to the Lexington-Fayette County Urban Government’s solid waste department. Some I had for 20 years. There were the first mix tapes I made for school dances a friend and I DJ’d together. Others had recordings of radio broadcasts I had done. Lots of memories there but you can’t keep everything. You have to go on.

I gave all of them one last spin through the tape deck, recorded some of the songs and broadcasts onto my computer’s hard drive like I did with the records, then threw them in the dumpster. You have to go on.

Last night I was going through my photographs looking for ones to get rid of. I really didn’t need that shot of my last station’s parking lot I took by accident because I thought I had finished the roll of film already.

I also found two pictures of dogs my brother had when he lived with his girlfriend in North Carolina. Their relationship blew up and it wrecked him. Would he want me to bring the pictures to him when I see him next week at Thanksgiving or should I rip them to shreds?

It’s his baggage so I let him decide whether to deal with it or throw it away. His e-mail reply just came: “Throw them out.”

That you and your beau communicate so well must explain why you haven’t called your “friend guy” to unload lately. I wondered if it wasn’t because you hadn’t taken some offense when I called myself the friend guy last time we talked.

“Oh, I know where this is going,” you said. No, you didn’t. I was going to explain that if it’s my job to listen to you vent – even when it’s being a man hearing how evil men are – that’s OK. It makes me feel useful.

There’s a song whose name and singer I’m too embarrassed to mention. (Twist my arm, already. The song is “Mandy” and it’s by Barry Manilow. There! I said it!) It has a line in it that goes “you came and you gave without taking.” That calendar you sent me with the sports quotations stayed on October 2 for longer than its allotted day because of its message from former NFL coach Sam Rutigliano that "You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."

I want to give without taking. I want to live more perfect days.

I’ve always been a taker, not in a cruelly selfish way, just self centered. All about me. I'm sure it's something psychological. Insecurity and all that. I’m trying to change, Jess, I really am. I’m not so good at it yet (look at all the sentences starting with “I” in this paragraph) but if listening to someone pour her troubles out, knowing that nothing I can say will soothe her as much as simply letting her tell them to a caring ear will, I figure that’s a start.

Lending my ear is giving something, isn’t it, even if it stays on my head?

And I promise I only know that Barry Manilow song from hearing it on a radio whose dial I did not control. None of the discarded cassettes had even one note played or sung by Mr. Manilow on it. Just so you know.

Whoa. Deep thoughts for a Saturday morning. This is supposed to be cartoon time. I should have known by how I woke up this morning at 7:05 with the thought, “How close to dying do you have to come before that which does not kill you makes you stronger?”

Because if that which does not kill you does not have to be particularly dangerous to make you stronger, I'm going to toughen myself by eating some of that cottage cheese I love so much.

Could be the start to a perfect day.

John

E-mail John

[ Journal Index ] [ My Music ] [ Video Clips ] [ Resume ] [ Site Map ]

©2002 John McQuiston