Saturday, January 26, 2019

The Chair

Down a west Texas backroad
Not really sure where
Sits a crumbling farmhouse
Inside, just a chair

Curiosity in me
Came out right away
How long has this chair
Been left to decay

The house, the land
And the chair that's inside
Left rotting and cold
Was once owned with pride

What forces at work
Caused them to go
By choice or by force
We may never know

Who was the first
To build on this site
Who was the last
To turn out the light

The image we see
Does not show the glory
Of what once was here
There's more to the story

Imagine the scene
Years past from this day
A family once lived
To work, eat, and play

Children are singing
And playing with dolls
Dad sits to rest
As a Texas night falls

As he rests in this chair
His long day is done
Tomorrow is near
Work starts with the sun

A tired child walks up
"Can I sit with you Pappy"
"Sure my sweet baby"
His heart is so happy

A prayer is whispered
As she falls asleep
I pray the Lord
My soul to keep

Good days and bad
As years they go by
Filled this grand house
Time sure does fly

Who knew way back then
What the future would be
This house is reduced
To the image we see

No doors or windows
To keep out the cold
No human around
To make their story told

Pictures and keepsakes
No place to be found
A home filled with laughter
Void of all sound

A house full of memories
Has now been stripped bare
The rooms are all empty
Except for a chair.

How to train your woman

Mop bucket, check.  Little bit of Dawn dish soap, check.  A couple of mom's clean towels and a dish towel, check.  Trouble later for perhaps ruining a good towel cleaning my car, check.  As a teenager, there was some satisfaction that came from washing my own car.  Even into my 20's and 30's, I still had the desire to set aside a couple of hours or so to bring whatever I was driving to a shine.  Don't forget the Armor All for the tires.  Check.  While filling up the mop bucket with water and watching it foam up from the dish soap, not one time did I ever think that my mission to keep my car clean would be analyzed by my 50-year-old self later down the road.  Sounds simple enough right?  People wash their cars all the time.  So what.  Well, I may have washed my car a little more than the average person.  Still, no big deal.  One mission and one mission only; have a shiny car with "wet look" shiny tires as I drove to school, work, the park, or to get roast beef from Armond's Meat Market.  But it's not that simple.  I realized something about myself a few years back and it carries with me today.  Albeit unknown to a young Clay, there was another, super-secret unknown mission hidden in the ruined dishcloths and bucket of suds.

It may have been a year or so ago.  I forget exactly.  But it must have been a nice, sunny day because the line for the automated car wash was long.  Credit card, check.  $2 off wash coupon, check.  A couple of microfibre towels to get the leftover drops that the dryer always misses at the end of the car wash conveyor, check.  I'm not sure which one of us noticed it first or even said something out loud first, but what caught our attention was a couple who were in the vacuum area.  Taking a wild guess, I'd say they were in their 60's or maybe older.  The woman was in and out of the van, sweating as she worked hard to get it vacuumed and clean.  It wasn't so much that, but the fact that the man (husband we assumed) was sitting on the raised concrete pad next to the vacuum machines.  He was watching as his van was getting cleaned without him having to lift a finger.  Meanwhile, back in the long line, opinions and judgments were taking shape.  Then thoughts became spoken words.  The conversation centered around how this guy was some kind of jerk making his wife clean their car while he sat and watched.  Men joke all the time about how to train your woman to do things for you so you don't have to.  Looked like this guy found a way.  As the sympathy for the woman grew stronger, so did the opinion about this a-hole who gladly sat idle while she struggled to make his life easier.  This went on for a couple of minutes as we slowly made our way closer to the machine that can do in 3 minutes what used to take me an hour.  Then it happened.  Can't deny it, because we both saw it.  Didn't catch it on video to prove it, but for me, it's burned into my brain like a hot iron brand on a cow's rear end.  This poor, sweating, not-so-fit older woman, reached into the van and pulled out a walker.  She made her way to the spot where Mr. Insensetive was sitting and helped him up and held him steady until he could slowly make his way back to the passenger door of the van.  WTF.  Holy crap.  Opinions and judgments were shattered, and rightly so.  For me, those opinions and judgments did a complete 180-degree turn.  Who was the a-hole now?  Who is Mr. Insensitive?  Not that man.  He was not physically able to help her, but he was there.  Prior to the moment she brought the walker into sight, this man was no better than the dirt hidden under my fingernails.  And why?  Never once did it cross my mind that he couldn't help, not that he wouldn't help if he could.  There's no guarantee that he would have, but by then it didn't matter to me.  I felt like crap.  Nice...real nice.  Ultimately, the analyst comes out in me.  I can't help it.  Was I completely inept at fully assessing a situation before forming an opinion or making a judgment on someone that's so far off base it would lead to a complete fail?  Or is it that as humans, we all make judgments regardless of the information we know at the time?  I've judged people before that moment, and I still do.  We all do and we can't deny it.  What we see and hear naturally causes us to form an opinion on what we believe is the truth.  It's in our DNA, just like we natively eat when we are hungry, drink when we are thirsty, and sing out loud when we hear Journey's "Don't Stop Believing".  We cannot escape it.  There is no doubt in my mind that I am judged by what people see or hear about me.  I can't live my life worrying about that.  I will judge and will be judged.  The things we say, or think, about other people without knowing the situation tell more about who we are than about how they are.  With that in mind, I try harder to think about those things I can't see or hear before truly forming an opinion about someone.  Everyone has their walker that others do not see.  Sometimes it's never seen, and other times it's brought into view when we didn't expect it.  Maybe we have that "a-ha" moment and realize that we were completely wrong.  Maybe we don't.  As for me, I can't live my life hanging on what others think about me.  I have faults.  I joke around sometimes and say "I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken".  Not my quote, but I like to throw it around in conversation.  I am wrong.  I do wrong.  I am human. 

This secondary mission that is part of the paint-by-numbers canvas of my life is the split between interacting with people and inanimate objects, like cars.  It's an escape from dealing with people in general.  I'm sure everyone feels this way every once in a while (see, I'm forming opinions like every human does...and I just did it again).  I happen to feel this way more often than not.  I can spend hours working on cars, research, photography, reading, games, or whatever brings that disconnect from dealing with people.  The balance is off, but is it wrong?  In who's opinion?  Who has the right to judge me for what I do?  Who decides what's the right balance between keeping to myself and human interaction?  Should I worry that people don't see my walker and have that a-ha moment to feel sorry for me and change their opinion to a more favorable one?  The answers to these questions are "nobody" and "no".  Fact; I'm what people refer to as a "loner".  What does that lead to?  People forming opinions and judging me for what they see and hear.  Three things to know about this.  One, I don't care what others think of me.  Two, know that while I'm being judged, either fairly or unfairly, people are judging you too.  Yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  Maybe right this second.  Maybe during the time you have spent reading this, someone has judged or formed an opinion of you.  How do you feel about that?  Does it bother you?  Do you let other's opinions of you affect how you live?  Some people do, others do not.  I'm with the latter.  The third thing to know about this...see number one.  When I finish writing this blog entry today, I'll probably retreat into a self-satisfying loner stage for a little while.  I'll be judged for it.  But I'll survive.

All that sounds pretty blunt and negative right?  Not the approach I try or want to take.  It carries with it the damage to others of being who I am.  While my DNA tells me not to care what others think of me, the way I approach the "balance" has left a path of destruction.  People I love and once loved have been hurt by my actions.  I have a selfish side and a side of me that would do anything to make others happy.  I've shifted more to the selfish side.  By far.  Maybe it's age.  Maybe it's medication.  Maybe it's too many slices of pizza affecting the chemical balance in my body.  Sometimes I don't want to figure it out and I'm perfectly happy being more selfish than not.  Is that age, chemicals from big Pharma, or many years of pepperoni talking?   Other times it hits me and I think "what the hell are you doing?"  This is NOT how you planned things.  Is this the new normal?  Am I the bull in the china shop?  Am I self-less or selfish?  Who I am really? 

To be continued. 

In the meantime, go ahead and pull up Don't Stop Believing and sing as loud as you can.  I won't judge.