Author: Dave Williams

Dave Williams is a radio news/talk personality originally from Sacramento, now living in Dallas, Texas, with his wife, Carolann. They have two sons and grandsons living in L.A.

Thought stream of a happy man

One week ago today it was 115 degrees outside. Now it is 60 and raining hard.

I love weather extremes.  I especially love Fall.  A week ago I sweated outside over barbecued ribs.  Today I’m making chili on the stove.

Today is my youngest son’s birthday.  He’s a good man.  I love him.  Wish he’d find his way.

I went camping over the weekend with my closest friends.

My radio buddies and I made our annual trek to Big Sur. Had chili and beer and a million laughs.  It will sustain me for months.  I love those guys.

When I got home I found out I was being fired from my fourth job in ten years. All my former employers praise my performance and my character. Go figure.

Glad I got the camping trip in first.

My wife and my kids and their kids adore me.

The dogs get very excited when they see me each morning and evening. They follow me from room to room.

I need to go stir the chili and head out to one of my last days on this particular job.

I do love cold, rainy days. I’m a happy man.

Penmanship

There’s a word that won’t be around long.

Remember your first day of first grade when you got that big, fat pencil and the brownish, grainy paper with printed blue lines about half an inch apart? I do. I literally remember that day 53 years ago, and even at the age of six there was something in me that thrilled at the prospect of crafting ideas into words in my brain and transmitting them to paper through my hands. I loved it from the beginning.

And for years they kept on us about our penmanship.  We spent time in class working on it. We were graded on it. Mine got pretty good. Attractive, even. Especially for a man, women would say later. I never really understood that but it sounded like a backhanded compliment. I didn’t dot my I’s with circles or hearts, for God’s sake.

By the time I entered my senior year of high school I had probably written the equivalence of War and Peace in longhand. (Longhand. That’s another word your grandchildren won’t need to know.) And then, came a turning point in my life. Mr. Moore, my high school counselor, talked me into taking a typing class.

Typing!

Listen, in the sixties only girls took typing because only secretaries used it. For a boy to take typing was as odd and as certain to elicit rude comments as a boy taking home economics. (I don’t think that was allowed. Seriously. Never saw a boy in Home-Ec.) But, good old Mr. Moore told me he thought it would be a good thing for me to learn to type. I had excellent grades in English classes. My teachers gave me high marks for my essays. Mr. Moore foresaw a possibility that I might become a writer at some point in my life and thought I should know how to type. Besides, he added as something of an afterthought…

…I would be the only boy in a class of 35 girls!

I was sold. It turned out there was one other boy in the class, Gerry Smith, and that was very cool because Gerry was a good guy and a friend since kindergarten. He was also a star football player and Student Council President. Nobody was going to make fun of Gerry and I was his typing class wing man.

And now, 41 years later, I tap away at keyboards all day long.

When it occurs to me I thank my lucky stars for Mr. Moore and his wisdom.

But, my attractive (especially for a man!) penmanship? Pffft! I can barely sign my name anymore and am rarely expected to do so. When I do it’s on one of those tiny credit-card-swipe machine plastic windows with the pen that’s not a pen. On those things my signature looks like I am stricken with an advanced case of palsy.

I never use a checkbook anymore. Maybe once a month.

I am only rarely called upon to sign a legal document of some sort and in those times I really don’t care if my signature is attractive or even legible. Far from it. Legibility is a cry for attention. It’s the pathetic sign of a man in need of self-respect and purpose: a follower, a drone. In fact, I have been led to believe that a proper, manly signature on a line above my name impressively typed by a bespectacled legal secretary shouldn’t be legible at all. It should be a large, John Hancock-bold, “D” followed by a rapidly diminishing, “I’m-a-busy-man!” squiggle.

But several times a year I have to write in birthday and Christmas cards and this is a sore trial.

A palsy-like signature simply won’t do. I must express loving thoughts in a deeply personal, though somewhat formal way. And I must do this in longhand.

I always screw it up. Always.

I misspell words my brain has known intimately for decades. I know the letters but my withered, retarded hand isn’t up to the challenge. I have to cross out these words and correct them. In ink. Pathetic. Or, I leave out a word altogether, or I think of an adoring adjective as an afterthought and am forced to print it between the lines in tiny letters with a little insertion arrow > to complete the thought.

I misjudge the distance from my script to the edge of the card and must squeeze a long word into a teeny-tiny space.

The pen sputters and spasms. Barely legible, here, Bic blots there.

By the time I’m finished with a card it looks like it was written by a palsied, slow-witted six-year-old.

I am waiting for the day technology gives us the best of both worlds: a greeting card which is printed but at the same time animated with a moving picture of me and my actual voice, expressing my deep and abiding love and friendship for the recipient of the card. No longhand required.

You know, like the pictures in The Daily Prophet — the newspaper of Harry Potter’s wizard world.

Would you be shocked to know they’re working on it?  Seriously, look here.

Penmanship?

A generation from now we won’t even have pens and pencils.

That’s okay with me. I’m just sayin’…

I know some people miss those beautifully hand-crafted letters that took several days to write and several more to arrive. Nostalgia keeps a heart warm but it doesn’t have anything at all to do with reality. The trick is to live with your heart in both places at once.

September 2010: The nice police

I don’t know why we sugar coat things these days.

For some reason the word “cripple” is distasteful so we now say “disabled.” Frankly, I don’t see how that’s any better. I guess the nice police figure it implies strength within infirmity. It excuses us from our physical and mental shortcomings though it doesn’t help us overcome and live with them. It helps us pretend we are not less than complete; we cripples are just as good as anybody else, even though we are, admittedly, “disabled.”

In the words of my Wyoming coal-mining cowboy grandfather, that is horse hockey.

I’m crippled. It’s no shame. I had an accident, that’s all. My feet don’t work well but my brain still does. I suffer a bit but I make do and live with it. And by the way, the accident was my own fault. I need to remember that so please don’t take it away from me.

Don’t call me a senior citizen. It’s cute but condescending.

Nobody is old these days. We’re “senior citizens.”

Puh-leeze. It’s cute but I’m not a big fan of cute except in babies and puppies. You can be a “senior” if you like but don’t call me that, okay? I’d rather be “old” or, better yet, not defined by my age at all. Don’t make me cute. I’m more than that.

I think all this social nice-nice has less to do with respect for others than our own desire to seem caring so we can accept our own imperfections.

People don’t get fired these days, they get “laid off.” 

I remember when “laid off” meant you could expect to be rehired in the near future. Not anymore. The fact is you’ve been fired, canned, kicked to the curb. The company you worked for just doesn’t need or want you anymore. But, it’s supposed to be somehow less painful to say you were “laid off.” Being “fired” is terribly, terribly personal.

It’s not your fault, nothing is.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? Nobody is at fault and nobody is to blame for the ups and downs of what we used to just call life.

My grandson’s soccer league doesn’t keep score. They don’t want any losers.

I don’t have to explain to you why that’s so horribly twisted. Most of you are old and wise like me. You remember when your parents and grandparents watched you fall, waited for you to cry and picked you up to wipe your tears, clean your wound and say, “I told you so!” Touching a hot stove is the only way to learn to never do it again. Losing is the only way to learn to win.

It used to be, anyway. These days being on the losing side of a soccer game is considered the death of self-respect.

The only thing that seems to matter now are our fragile egos and manufactured self-esteem.

I can’t change the culture but I still have something to say about the raising of my own sons and grandsons. Here’s what I’d like to say to them:

–You will curse your mistakes and failures. I will quietly celebrate them because they’re lessons I can’t give you. You are a winner and, at times, a loser. Deal with it. You’ll be happier for it.

–You will suffer emotionally and I will try to love you out of your pain but then I’ll have to go home and leave you to sort it out for yourself. Can’t help it, that’s the way it works.

— There is not enough time in my life or yours for us to completely share our hearts. Try to be grateful for every moment we have together, especially the ones that seem unimportant at the time.

Thirty-some years ago while in the depths of my personal despair my father, my hero, told me — in these exact words, which I will never forget:

“If you don’t love yourself you’ll never be worth a damn to anybody else.”

And now, I have finally reached an age where I am qualified to add to my dad’s life-defining revelation:

You don’t love yourself for being good, that’s a given. You love yourself for falling down, getting up and living better for what you have learned.

Summer

What is it about summer that fills and yet drains us?

You say it’s the heat and certainly that defines it. It’s the close intensity of the sun through a hazy sky. Sharp shadows. Fuzzy memories.

Summer was our youthful promise of immortality. It began at the exact moment of the final school bell in early June. It proceeded through endless days of hitting baseballs and jarring polliwogs from the slippery, slimy-green drainage ditch that ran through our neighborhood like our own private subway.

Summer involved rolling down grassy hillsides, giggling, wearing only shorts and then being itchy all day.

Summer made necessary running through lawn sprinklers, wherever we found them inviting us in.

The entire neighborhood played hide-and-seek. No place was out of bounds. It might take half an hour to find kids scattered behind parked cars, perched in trees and jumping fences to race through neighboring backyards.

“OLLY-OLLY OXEN FREE!”

Summer evenings frequently found us in front yards on blankets. The entire family was there and neighbor kids and sometimes their parents, as well.

We’d look through the grass for four-leaf clovers and watch Venus follow the sun into a darkening horizon. We looked for shooting stars and UFOs. We drank Kool-Aid and talked about what we wanted to do tomorrow.

The cricket chorus began at full darkness as the Delta breeze arrived from the Golden Gate. Shortly after that Mom said it was time to come in and take a bath. The truth is, I didn’t really mind. I was tired.

And I wanted tomorrow to get here fast.

The lonely road

Many years ago my world ended at the age of 30. It happened the day I moved out of my house, away from my wife and four-year-old son, and into a drab apartment. Divorce happens and when one is young it truly seems to be the end of all that matters.

Happily, we are profoundly ignorant in youth.

These days, nearly 30 years later, I travel with my darling Carolann and our precious girls, Cricket and Lady. Our motor home is perfect for us and so are we all. But I still hit the road alone frequently because I must. For that, I have a camper and a pickup. And when I go, I travel in my own good company because, after my first thirty years of living, I learned something rather delightful.

I like me.

“In solitude, where we are least alone.” — Lord Byron

Shortly after the separation, I was forced to go on vacation alone. Still buffeted by the emotional storm I set out for a week by myself in a too-big rented house on the Northern California coast which, of course, was where my now ex-wife and I had spent many happy times together. Great choice, huh?

For the first time in my life, I was truly alone. At the age of 30, I spent my first night ever in absolute and despairing isolation. I cried myself to sleep and the sound of it was disturbing.

“With some people, solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves.” — Eric Hoffer

I remember thinking it was odd to pass entire days without uttering a single word because there was nobody to hear it. So, I tried talking aloud to myself. It was a comically depressing exercise and I soon gave it up. But then a funny thing happened. I continued to hear my thoughts.

This, too, was a first in my life and a stunning one.

It was a distant voice, quiet and almost shy. It was I, trying to get my attention so I began to listen.

I told myself to get out of my wallow and take a shower. Leave this place for a while, I said. And so, we did.

“I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” — Einstein

I put on nice clothes: slacks, a dress shirt, a tie and a jacket. I took myself to a nice restaurant and when I boldly asked for a table for one I added, “by the window, if possible.” I ordered wine, treated myself to an expensive meal, and had a nice, long, quiet internal conversation while watching the sun slide behind the Pacific.

“People who aren’t alone are rather noisy, aren’t they?” I commented silently. “Yes, they certainly are!” I replied with a grin. Then I opened my notebook and began to write my impressions of the people around me. My inner self did the eavesdropping while I wrote descriptions. I gave them names. I invented their lives and I found I enjoyed them as well.

“What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely alone can be.” — Ellen Burstyn

At the end of the evening, we went back to the rented house near the thunderous surf and squawking gulls. Amazingly, it was no longer empty.

No place ever has been since.

Box o’ troubles

I have an odd affinity for wooden boxes.

I have some nice ones, too. Some are old and ornate, some are not so old and plain, but they hold my treasures. I keep all sorts of mementos in a couple of them but most of them are empty.

Well,  not quite. The biggest one holds my hopes and dreams.

Today I’ve decided  to designate one of my beautiful wooden boxes as my troubles box. It’s Saturday morning and I’m going to dump all my troubles in that box for the weekend.

I’ll take them out one at a time next week as I need to deal with them.

Is that silly? I think it’s brilliant.

Bugs

Mel Gibson is a bug. He needs to be squished.

He is famously handsome, funny, lovable, talented and wealthy.

Which is why he must now be squished.

It’s what we do to our icons, right? We make ’em bigger than life, take away their material needs, and leave them alone to wrestle with their inflated emotional needs.

It’s the deal with the devil, the price of fame and fortune.

And then, when they get as rich and famous as they’re going to get, when we’re about finished with them when they stumble and we can smell the fear, we jump on them like a pack of wild dogs.

“‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!'” *

There is no excusing or justifying Mel’s behavior but there is a reason for it. I don’t know what it is. It suggests a raging psychosis that must be chemically treated and held in check. But, hell. I don’t know. How would I?

How would you?

I don’t care what happens to Mel Gibson. Well, I do care but only in an abstract way. What I care about more is the cheap thrill we get from the pervasive, nonstop media airings of Mel and Oksana’s dirty laundry.

It relieves us to mock and spit on our icons.

Who cares if Mel eats a bullet?

And while we’re at it, send that booze-sucking slut, Lindsay, to jail and throw away the key.

We made them. When we’re finished playing we’ll destroy them.

“The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.” *

Lighten up, it’s all in good fun. These people aren’t real people, we invented them.

It’s not my fault Michael Jackson was weird; I didn’t kill him. He did it to himself. He was weird.

And I was finished with him, anyway.

“We was on the outside. We never done nothing, we never seen nothing.”*

It’s been a week. The story is old. Oksana will thrive. Mel will live or he won’t.

Who’s next?

“after all we aren’t savages really…” *

* William Golding, Lord of the Flies

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

A chirpy, “Good morning!”

I awoke in an unusually good mood today. I’m really happy.

There’s no particular reason for it and it’s not that I ever wake up grumpy, because I don’t. I just awoke super smiley today, that’s all.

I went to the grocery store at about 9:30 a.m. In the parking lot I approached a woman leaving the store, pushing a basket and apparently in deep concentration. She seemed oblivious to my existence.

“Good morning!” I chirped. This is not like me. This is something new. I don’t talk to strangers, especially strangers who seem to be busy, even if only in their private little worlds. Maybe especially then.

That’s what it is, really. I’m not an unfriendly person. I just don’t want to intrude on your privacy. But, for some reason and for the first time in my life that I can recall I smiled broadly at the concentrating stranger and chirped — yes, I’ll use that verb again because it’s perfect — I chirped “Good morning!”

The woman blinked and look momentarily confused and maybe just a tad defensive. Who are you? What do you want? (I’m sure those were her first thoughts.) Why are you bothering me?

But she forced herself to smile weakly and nod slightly. I think she also picked up her pace just a bit.

Inside the store I decided to experiment. I chirped “Good morning” to almost everybody just to see their reactions.

The people who work in the store responded in kind but they have to. It’s their jobs, so they don’t really count. But, I give them a lot of credit for taking pride in their small, personal part-ownership of Albertsons. How can you not love people who love their jobs?

A man slightly older than me, wearing shorts and a Mexican tourist fishing hat, smiled broadly and returned my greeting as I scooped up baby red potatoes. I think he and I could have sat down at Starbucks, had a cup of coffee and solved all the problems of the world together.

I guess it stands to reason that men about my age or slightly older would be the most likely to find genuine cheer in my greeting than younger men or women of any age.

In the cold and pain relief aisle I met a guy I would guess to be in his late 30s or early 40s. He smiled, nodded and said “Hi!” brightly but rather professionally. For a brief moment I felt like a prospective client but his smile whipped right past me to his watch. I’m sure he didn’t mean to do that. This is the best place I’ve ever written for me to use the word, “perfunctory.”

I encountered a young woman in the pasta sauce section. She had a small girl by the hand and a baby in the basket. (In a baby carrier in the shopping cart, I mean.) She looked pleasantly surprised by my greeting, returned my smile, gave me a little finger wave and cheerfully said, “Hello!” I think I amused her. It struck me that without noticing I have apparently slipped into the age where young women no longer think I’m trying to hit on them. They probably think I’m just a cute, harmless old man now.

Darn.

But, I continued.

A woman about my age glanced at my chirpy intrusion and said nothing. She quickly transformed her glance into one of those panning gazes beyond me as if to appear that was she was looking wistfully for her long-departed love to return from war. Or maybe she was looking for the saltine crackers aisle.

I was careful to not chirp “Good morning!” to any children. Especially not little girls. I didn’t want anybody to become suspicious that I might be a dangerous, dirty old man. That’s sad, isn’t it? It is to me.

By the time I reached the checkstand I felt like Santa Claus.

I had smiled and chirped my way through a supermarket full of people who might mention to their spouses or best friends, in passing, about the weird, strangely happy guy they had met in Albertsons this morning. It might be a revelation to them. They, themselves, might become happier and more outgoing in public.

Or, not.

More likely none of them gave it a second thought once I was at a safe and non-communicative distance.

On the other hand, I learned something vitally important for myself:

Being happy makes me happy.

What you do with it is up to you.

“Liar at checkstand four!”

I went grocery shopping yesterday and saved $29.75.

I know I did because it says so right on the bottom of the receipt just above the place where I am urged to take a customer survey online and become eligible to win $100. (That’s a package of hot dogs and a six pack of Pepsi these days.)

When did grocery stores become so damned chummy? A little small talk with the checker is nice but I don’t need to have an ongoing personal relationship with corporate Albertsons, Vons and Ralphs.

It really irks me to have to carry a special card identifying me as a Preferred Customer. In fact, I would be quite happy to be an Undesirable Customer and remain totally anonymous if I wouldn’t get hosed at the checkstand for refusing to become a subject of their marketing database.

Once I went shopping at a foreign grocery store in a different city.

“Do you have our rewards card?” the checker asked sweetly.

“No. Just go ahead and give me the ‘screw-you’ price,” I replied. I really did. I said it with a smile but I think it unnerved her a bit. Felt kinda bad about it. Kinda.

When I signed up for the coerced honor of being a Preferred Customer of our neighborhood Albertsons I lied.

That’s what these annoying, albeit minor, intrusions do. They force us to lie. I didn’t want the store to have my phone number so I made one up. It gave me a great feeling of smug satisfaction until the day I arrived at the checkstand without the card and was told, “That’s okay. I’ll look it up. What’s your phone number?” I told her I didn’t know it. Then, I broke down and admitted my rebellious perjury. I looked at my shoes as I did it. I half expected to hear an announcement a moment later on the p.a. system, “Manager to checkstand four…we have a liar at checkstand four!”

Not long after that I was back at the same store. When I told the checker (a different one, thank God,) I didn’t have my card she asked for my phone number and for some reason I don’t quite understand I told her my actual home phone number. I knew it wouldn’t work in the system but I just felt ashamed and wanted to purge myself of my well-deserved reputation as a known charlatan in Albertsons. Guess what? It worked!

My actual phone number was accepted and I was back in the good graces of the Albertsons Corporation! I was, again, a Preferred Customer, praise the Lord!

A moment later I realized why my phone number worked. Somebody else had fabricated a phone number and it just happened to be mine!

Now the checkstand clerks have taken to thanking us by name as a result of their marketing scheme database and as I turned to leave the store that sunny afternoon, awash in the warm renewal of smug satisfaction for having beaten the system the nice lady at the checkstand said, “Thank you and have a nice day, Mr. Martinez!”

Life is good.