Today, I was talking to one of the baristas at the coffee shop and we agreed that we were not in … er, top form, let's say … in our 20s. He can't understand why anyone was even friends with him. I'm not sure why I'm still alive. We did stupid things in our youth. Some of us are still doing stupid things in our middle age. Ahem.
Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about viridianmasquerade's thoughts:
What are the experiences, who are the people that make up my mosaic? I still sometimes sing a version of The Christmas Song that a friend and I wrote to celebrate McDonalds, particularly their chicken nuggets. We were 17 and I had a terrible, no-good, very bad job there (that often provided free food at the end of the night). Every Christmas, when Bing Crosby starts singing The Christmas Song on my playlist, I think about sitting at the lunch table with her and another friend as we wrote our new lyrics. "Happy Christmas to all and please stop back again."
Did you know that tuna – in water, of course – is my preferred bulk-up protein? When I was a bodybuilder many years ago, Joe, from a dirty little place called Joe's Gym (still operating in my hometown), taught me the calf exercises I still use and encouraged me to eat tuna after every workout.
When I was 21, two friends and I traveled to Cancun and nearly got ransomed or sex-trafficked or possibly murdered by two young men we met there. There is a certain (popular) song that I can't hear without thinking of that trip and the drive deep into the heart of the jungle on a single-lane dirt road while the radio blared top 40 songs.
My favorite banana bread recipe came from a woman I met after grad school. It was her grandmother's recipe. My friend, and colleague at the design firm, wrote it out for me late one weekend afternoon while we sat in a local restaurant and ate grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches followed by a shared slice of caramel apple pie a la mode. I haven't seen that woman in 30 years but the recipe is still great.
I turn on lights – or use the flashlight on my phone – as I walk through my house because my father made me afraid of the dark when I was a single-digit child. He'd hide in dark places throughout the house and jump out at me. He's been gone for 14 years (and I moved out 35 years ago) but I still turn on lights wherever I am.
All the wooden spoons my mom used to punish us are long gone. She even broke one of them on my back when I was still shorter than she was but as mouthy as someone twice her size. I remember her advice every time I use one: don't let wooden spoons soak in water. Wash them by hand with a damp cloth. Even now, that's the way I wash my wooden spoons, though I've never hit a child with one.
Much of the music I listen is from someone's recommendation: Affordable Floors, Steely Dan, Sufjan Stevens, Orville Peck, Creepy Nuts. Those songs and those people all included in my story because of a casual suggestion that they probably don't even remember.
So many people make up that mosaic … it's mostly dark colors, deep blues and chocolate browns, colors of sorrow and grief; but there are a few bits of lightness to add some beauty to the whole miraculous mess. Also, it's important to note that it isn't finished yet, not for a good while. At least, so I hope.
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