Hung One More Year on the Line

Sitting at the intersection of Lafayette and Washington streets in Norwich, Connecticut, yesterday afternoon as my light went green. Because my mother raised crazy, but not stupid, children I've practiced for years the art of 'three Mississippis' after the light changes before rolling ahead. This time, again, counting to three (Mississippi) stood me in good stead.

An Obliviot in a late-1990s model of a four-door Toyota (I think) rolled through the red light at two Mississippi, all the while chatting away on the cell phone clamped to his right ear. At that moment, he was only physically in the car but was really wherever he and the person on the cell phone were having their moment. 

Piloting a mostly metal mobile device weighing a ton or more (I have NO idea how much cars weigh but a ton reads pretty well. Does this SUV make my butt big?) with an internal combustion engine, and casual disregard for traffic signals and rules of the road (and common sense) to the contrary, this fellow is another Obliviot with whom we all share the planet.

When we reorder the universe and place ourselves at the center, instead of realizing life goes on within you AND without you and see ourselves as the stars of a worldwide movie where everyone else is a walk-on, we've become an Obliviot. It's not a constant process or a one-time deal, but the more often we live without thinking, the harder thinking in our lives becomes and the easier the path to oblivion seems. As kids, our moms taught us to take turns but as grown-ups we practice that as 'me first'. Close, but different enough that the rest of us have to cope.

In a perfect world today, this driver could and should have had a misfortune befall him but the Larger World compensated for him and the worst thing that happened was I mentioned him in this rant. Probability suggests he'll never read these words and even if he did he'll never recognize himself, and in my own way, I've become an Obliviot.

I'm 73 years old today and continue to grow old without growing wiser. I keep bumping into the people I used to be without fully appreciating at many levels I am still those guys and that a part of me will always be those people. If we are truly the sum of our life experiences and of everyone we've ever met, I should have paid more attention to arithmetic in grammar school because I'm terrible at addition.
-bill kenny 

Hung One More Year on the Line

Today is my birthday. I mention this because family and friends (you might assume they are one and the same, in a very small number and somewhat reluctant to be considered either. You may also kiss my grits) have congratulated me which is something we all do on birthdays but I've always felt we do it to the wrong person.

I always thanked my Mom when she called, and she always did, referring to her as 'without whom none of this would be possible' because she really was, together with my dad, the person who made it all possible. I didn't have a plan then and I still don't have a clue. I'm not yet used to the idea that she will not be calling, not just this year again but ever again but I suppose I have the rest of my life to get used to it.. 

I am one of six and the first draft of a child so to speak. Each of us has run pretty much the same race, if on different courses and in different circumstances than those our parents had, and their parents before them.

I traveled halfway across the earth a lifetime ago and found someone who loves me to this day despite myself, which is leichter gesagt als getan (believe me). We have two beautiful children who are themselves, adults, though one of their parents tends to forget that, a lot (and it's not their mother).

When I was a child, I desperately wanted to be a grown-up. I hurried through childhood as if there were a prize somewhere for being first without ever knowing what first felt like or why it was so important. It wasn't, and it never will be, and I've only recently discovered that which would have been very useful to that little boy of eight standing in the big backyard on Bloomfield Avenue in Somerset, NJ. Too late smart, nothing new there.

It's taken me all this time and all those years to realize just how much I don't know and to accept that the list of things I will never know continues to expand exponentially into infinity. I could waste what's left of my life yearning for what can never be or be gracefully grateful for that which I have. The latter feels like a good choice at this point.

"It takes a long time to grow young," said Picasso and none of us have as long a time left as we think or hope. But it's what we do with what we have that defines us and how we live and who we love. Happy birthday to me. says the calendar but happy birthday to you as well, be it today or whenever it is.

-bill kenny