MAKING TIME LAST WITH OVER DAVE

Making time for someone is one of the nicest things you can do.

You hear about it from people who say they’d like more time with one particular person.

Except that person is usually dead.

Then what? Plan B.

As we go through our day, our week, month, year in and year out, we take things for granted, as if nothing will ever change and we’ll have time later if not now.

Sound familiar?

I knew a dad who planned on making up for lost time when his kids got older.

The kids got older, he forgot about it in the hustle of modern life, and died before he put his plan into motion.

It happens more often then I like to think.

To avoid a similar problem, I try and wear people out by being helpful.

Overly helpful. I call it OD, which is short for Over David.

They get my advice, my observations, my hopes and dreams.

After seeing the effects of Over Dave, I’ve cut back.

I still do the same thing, but do it here on boomerpdx.

Based on engagement and thoughtfulness, I fill up a page every day with enough words to make it a standard newspaper column.

Am I a newspaper columnist?

Is anyone a newspaper columnist? Who even reads a newspaper?

I see the Oregonian lying in driveways around the neighborhood while I’m walking the dog and think how better informed they must be than me.

That’s what a newspaper used to do, inform us.

Maybe they still do?

 

Newspapers Mark The Day

Way back before national papers like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, and the Los Angeles Times were branded ‘fake news’ by some fuckwit who didn’t like what they  about him, newspapers were a staple of life.

My childhood paper was the Coos Bay World.

Now you can read it online, like most papers.

No more ink stains, folding, and lining the birdcage.

Now it’s just scrolling and skimming.

There’s no paper to start fires in the backyard with, no paper to catch up on past events with.

Libraries and museums used to have microfiche and readers.

 

“Students waited in line to use the machines,” recalls Roland Rodene, the supervisor for BU’s library’s microform department, in the Boston.com article.

“Now, mostly Ph.D. students use them when they need an obscure journal or archived material.”

 

In the ‘right now, immediate’ world of digitization everything is obscure if it’s not online.

But with proper storage, microfiche is all about making time, documenting time, and bringing it to the present.

The last time I used it was decades ago in the downtown Portland Multnomah County Library on SW 1oth St.

 

Over Dave Time Goes Overtime

How many times have you been the idiot, the moron, the dumbass of dumbasses?

If the answer is never you must be a quiet person.

Anyone with an opinion can be called out, and once it happens, if it comes from someone you like spending time with, you quiet down because they can’t take it.

I encourage opinions and outspokenness not to put someone down, but to let them know they have freedom of speech.

Even though I may not like what they say, there’s no repercussions from me since I asked for it.

It’s a give and take thing, but sometimes that gets forgotten.

If life is a two way street, make room for traffic.

A one way street, a one way relationship, is fine if everything goes your way.

But if you breakdown into a shit-fit when things don’t go your way?

Where has that ever worked long term?

When a thin skinned bully takes their lumps and whines about like it only happens to them, what does it mean?

It means they’re a thin skinned bully, a baby, and not someone who is serious.

Does that sound like you or anyone you know?

If so, what is the remedy when the sniveling and whining grows too annoying?

Check your surroundings to see if you annoy anyone with your noise.

Only you? Then dial it down.

Someone you know? Get to the root of the problem.

But what if it’s a media person who keeps popping up everywhere?

Use your media filter. In other words, change the channel.

That’s your super power, choice.

You may choose to shut the door on an affront to common sense and decency.

How would you go about doing that?