TIME TELLS ON ALL OF US

Time tells, so why not make it good story?

“Go to sleep for twenty years and wake up and tell everyone how great you could have been.”

That’s a line from The Tender Bar.

It’s a good line, maybe the best in the movie.

The haunting part sinks in with time. Twenty years?

That used to sound so long.

It used to come with a gift, a gold watch, because your time was up.

Forty years? That’s long beard land, last breath before dying stuff.

Now pro athletes play into their forties.

And the rest of us adjust to the clock.

Face Time Tells

At 20 you have the face God gave you, at 40 you have the face that life has molded, and at 60 you have the face you deserve.

I this new for anyone?

I enjoy, maybe too much, seeing the faces of famous writers and thinkers with a cigarette.

There they are looking old and wise way too early after cartons and cartons of Phillip Morris Cammanders, Lucky Strikes – LSMFT, and Camel straights.

Though tobacco may have aged their faces for a mature advantage, looking sixty by age thirty-five, it also gave academics and their ilk a vocational advantage:

Smoking damaged their health so much that it was all they can do to get dressed and sit at a desk. Skipping showers just amplified their aura, aroma, something.

Let the writing and reading continue after another nice, stinking, cigarette whose smoke will drift all over you and onto anyone close enough.

That’s relaxing satisfaction at it’s finest. Cough, cough.

Take Another Twenty, But Make It Ten

No one is getting any younger around here.

If you’re a baby boomer who woke up after a twenty year nap and didn’t tell everyone how great you could have been, take another ten.

Don’t take twenty, because, you know, the waking up part.

Better yet, if you don’t have any greatness to regret, stay up and take some of mine.

Like The Time:

I had the biggest tryout of my sports life.

The night before, I went out with guys who had friends trying out, too.

Things got out of hand, I failed my tryout.

I coulda been a contender.

Time Tells It All

Or the time:

I resisted running Hood to Coast for three years.

At age forty-nine I caved and trained.

For my effort, the team gave me the final leg of the race, the homestretch the finish line.

This was the third of three race legs after riding in a van with four teenaged boys and another dad all night long. ‘All night’ is no exaggeration. It’s an all-nighter kind of event.

I turned the corner in Seaside, hit the sand. I could see the finish line a ways up.

Then the cheering started. I was alone with the cheering crowd and loved it.

In that moment I was Frank Shorter, I was Bill Rodgers having a Steve Prefontaine moment.

I grew suspicious when the crowd noise grew louder, which never happens for the runners barely finishing. It’s usually a quiet cheer, but this one kept building.

That’s when I looked back to see some kid having the kick from hell. He was going to beat someone that day, and it looked like I’d be it.

I kicked, he kicked, we all kicked. He crossed in front of me, barely.

I crossed and took a sharp right turn to avoid his arms in the air hug waiting to drop.

I could have been a good sport.

Do I look like a good sport? Or someone having a near death experience?

2

Take that thing you could have been had you not taken the nap and give it a good shake.

I’ve got some Legos around here to fuel my inner Frank Lloyd Wright.

What about you?

I hear stained glass hits all the right buttons. It’s skill and materials you can grow with and end up with something beautiful.

So, what about you? Welding? Weaving? Whittling?

Or . . . . . . .