About thirty years ago I was working with a guy named Bob Nathan. He told me one morning that he had just invested some money in a new company that was going to sell drinking water in plastic bottles. I thought he was kidding. When I found out he wasn’t, I thought he was crazy.
No, this is not a scene from a sci-fi movie about cloning geeky teens. It’s an actual tanning bed.
Who would ever pay for bottled water?
Bob retired years ago. I’m still working for the man.
About the same time another friend bought a tanning salon, where people would spend ridiculous amounts of money to bake themselves to a turkey skin crisp. And mind you, this was in California where the sun is always shining for free.
Date night at the oxygen bar. We’ve blurred out their eyeballs to protect their dignity.
Have you heard about oxygen bars? Yes, it’s true. People make dating reservations to sit down and plug hoses into their noses so they can pay to breathe.
And yet another friend, I’ll call her Jennifer because that’s her name, bought a cattle ranch and decided to supplement her income by chopping up dead trees and selling firewood in small packs at local stores. Firewood! That’s literally burning money!
And by the way, don’t think it didn’t occur to me to wonder why someone who could buy a cattle ranch needed to sell useless dead wood.
.I may be slow but I’m not entirely stupid. After thirty years I have an idea of my own. I’m going to charge people money to be nice to them. For a dollar a day I’ll be pleasant whenever our paths cross. Or, wait…how about this? For two dollars a day I’ll stay out of your life completely.
We all get tired of constantly being around other people. Not always or often, but occasionally we need a break from even the people we love most in life: our spouse, our kids, our best friend. And it’s not just one or two of them at a time it’s all of them all at once!
I’m no psychologist but I’m absolutely sure this is normal and healthy and nothing to worry about. After all, absence makes the heart grow fonder, right?
Or, as Dan Hicks put it in his song by the same name: How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away?
Have you ever wondered how you can go through your entire life without feeling that way about yourself? Geez! Everywhere you go all day, every day, there you are!
When you go to bed you go with you. When you wake up you’re still there.
Every single moment of your life you know everything you’re thinking and everything you’re going to say before you say it! Doesn’t that make you just a little crazy every once in awhile?
You understand yourself better than anybody else. You talk to yourself but you never, I mean NEVER, have a disagreement. You like the same foods, watch the same TV shows, laugh and cry at the same things and you love the same people.
The one thing I almost never do is surprise myself. And that’s a drag.
I swear, sometimes I just need a short break from me. I need to send myself away or take a short vacation and be somebody I never met before. Or, be nobody at all just for a little while.
If you know me personally, admit it, the thought of being with me 24/7 for 66 years is unimaginable, right? Sure it is! You couldn’t do it, so why should I be expected to?
Here in North Texas the seasons change overnight. And then they change back again. A couple of days ago we hit 94 degrees. Today we’re going to stay in the 40s. Next month or next week we might have snow, then back to 85 for a couple of days.
Texas is famous for it and I love the variety.
We all mark the passing of time with changes in the weather. If it never changed we would seem to be living the same day over and over.
And yet… the days and years of our lives often seem to change like calendar pages flying off the screen to show passage of time in old movies.
You know what frustrates me? I can’t remember everything. The past 66 years are written on my brain in fuzzy black and white memories like the photographs of my childhood. They’re all mixed up in my shoebox of a brain. I sort through them from time to time and while I can usually remember a relative few specific places and people the entire experience of my life is mostly conjecture.
I figure young people of today will have the opposite problem. When they’re my age they’ll be sorting through hundreds of thousands of pictures of cats and babies they once knew and meals they once ate.
Making sense of your life is as hard as predicting it
I’ve loved a lot of dogs in my life but none so much as the Yorkshire terrier I bought Carolann as a gift seventeen years ago. Only a few weeks old at the time, we named her Cricket for the way she hopped through the grass of our front lawn, grass that came up to her tiny chest. Cricket, or as we often called her, our “Baby Girl”, stole our hearts when we first laid eyes on her.
Cricket passed away a few years ago. Dogs always leave us too soon but I like to think they’re pretty close to perfect when God gives them to us. They don’t need to learn long lessons as we do.
When we first brought Cricket home we began the potty training. We’d take her outside in the back yard every hour or two and command her to “go potty.” She’s a smart baby girl and she would learn quickly.
One evening, shortly after dusk, I took her into the backyard and we began going through the exercise. “Go potty, Cricket,” I said. Curious puppy that she was she ignored me and sniffed and poked around the yard while I continued to give the command, firmly yet kindly.
It was a lovely spring evening. A single cricket (the insect, not the dog) was chirping. I eventually became aware that our next-door neighbor was in his yard across the fence. The fence was tall enough that we couldn’t see each other but I was aware of his movements and he could hear me, of course.
Here’s what he heard:
A single cricket chirping.
And me, in sweet baby-talk, saying, “Go potty, Cricket… Cricket, go potty for Daddy.”
We all have at least one wacky neighbor. That evening I was it.
Driving northwest from Dallas into the desolate Texas panhandle we finally came upon a sign announcing our entrance into a place called Dumas.
The boy read it aloud.
“DOO-mahs,” he said correctly.
“That’s not quite right,” I told him seriously. “You’re mispronouncing it but it’s not your fault. The name of the town used to have a ‘B’ in the middle. This is the town of Dumbass.”
Well, being eleven years old our grandson, Isaiah, thought that was very funny and he giggled for a long time. We all did.
Grandpa and Isaiah King
Then, for the rest of the trip to Wyoming and back to Dallas, Isaiah, CarolAnn and I called each other “Dumas” from time to time and then we all giggled and snorted for a few more miles.
Shared laughs of our own creation are moments we enshrine in our hearts.
It’s the stuff a boy will remember his entire life.
Today is the Dumas Kid’s 15th birthday. We’re going to phone him and tickle his memory.
I was one of those annoying kids who was always showing off. I put on plays for my parents, forcing my little sister to be incidental characters. I think I cast her as a dog once.
In high school I had lead roles in both senior plays. Before that I was cast as a 16 year old Ebeneezer Scrooge in a Sacramento Parks & Recreation teen workshop production of A Christmas Carol.
As an adult I’ve acted in and directed dozens of plays and in the process I came to write a few.
That’s where my friend Florin found me.
Florin Piersic Jr. read my first play, Brothers!, and liked it so much he produced, directed and starred in its first professional staging at the National Theatre in Timisoara, Romania, three months ago — 17 years after he first read it.
I flew to Romania to attend the opening. The show was magical even though I didn’t understand a word of my own dialogue.
Florin brought me onto the stage for the curtain call. We hugged in the spotlight, our first in-person meeting after swapping emails for nearly two decades.
Florin is a wonderful actor, a ruggedly handsome man, gentle and soft-spoken off stage; fearless before his audience.
Tonight he’s in Hollywood for the premier of an Amazon Prime TV production, Comrade Detective, in which he costars with Channing Tatum, who lends his voice to Florin’s bold on-camera performance.
Florin Piersic Jr. IMDB.com
Comrade Detective exhibits Florin’s physical acting skills while withholding his perfectly nuanced vocal delivery.
You can’t spring this much talent on America all at once.
Rupe un picior, prietene, Florin!
Break a leg, my friend.
(PS. After publishing this I was informed by another Romanian friend that there is no such expression as "break a leg", meaning "good luck", in the Romanian language. What I said here was apparently a sincere and friendly wish that Florin should literally break a leg...and not necessarily his own! This is why I love words.)
Six years ago today I posted this picture on my Facebook page after the most recent best day of my magical summer in Chicago.
I took the Red Line from the Loop and got out at Addison with hundreds of others, excited and chattering. Most of them had tickets, I did not. Nor was I working “on assignment” for our radio station.
I just wanted to be there.
At the intersection of Clark and Addison a line of buses emptied passengers, ages 8 to 80.
I turned on my recorder and talked with a lot of them. Our excitement was mutually contagious. We clucked and laughed and sang bits of Beatles songs together as strangers yet new friends.
When they were all inside I packed up my recorder and waited on the street in front of Cubby Bear with a few dozen other ticketless but grinning loiterers. There was no place we needed to be.
Right on schedule a roar went up from the unseen crowd and Wrigleyville was suddenly flooded by the opening chords of a Beatles classic and McCartney’s unmistakable voice:
“ROLL UP FOR THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR, STEP RIGHT THIS WAY!”
It was magical, even from the outside listening in.
The giant billboard outside Teatrul National Timisoara
Three weeks ago today I awoke in Timisoara, Romania, feeling like a kid on Christmas morning.
It was the night I had traveled for and dreamed of: opening night of the first professional performance of my first play, BROTHERS!
This play was written from a concept borne of a half-drunken conversation with my friends at Stagedoor Comedy Playhouse in Sacramento.
Now, twenty years later, I awoke in Timisoara after losing my smart phone (and therefore half my brain) and turning a seven hour drive into twelve with a brief stop to explain my American ignorance of Romanian road signs to a couple of very nice police officers in the Carpathian Mountains. They told me I was speeding. I told them I was sorry and lost. They let me go, pointing me thataway, admonishing me to turn left before I wandered into Hungary.
I thanked them profusely and did as I was told.
Stumbling into Timisoara several hours later than planned, I met my first Romanian friend, Vlad Arimia, and we had a lovely dinner.
Despite my long and confusing day I slept well that night and awoke the next morning unconcerned about the play. I thought it was stupid. Always have. The Sacramento Bee reviewer of its Stagedoor world premiere disparaged it as, “…an alcohol-fueled testosterone festival.”
She was right, of course. That’s what it was meant to be. It was Dumb and Dumber before that movie came out and made the concept cool and profitable.
Florin Piersic Jr.
Now, twenty years later, here I was in Eastern Europe at the Romanian National Theatre preparing for the professional debut of BROTHERS! directed by and starring Florin Piersic Jr., one of the biggest stars in Europe.
I wasn’t worried about the play. It was what it was: dumb (and dumber). I was just excited to meet Florin and to pick his brain. He obviously saw something in my work that still eludes me.
The show that night was amazing. The acting, the sets, lighting, special effects and all the theatrical dressings of the evening gave me a new appreciation for how high theater craft masters can elevate even a piece of silly nonsense.
The audience gave the cast three standing ovations and though I hadn’t understood a word of my own play, I leapt to my feet in joyous agreement. Whatever had happened on that stage for nearly three hours was magical in its performances.
After we finally met and hugged for the first time Florin told me, apparently sincerely, “I don’t understand why this play isn’t on Broadway.”
“Because it’s a cheesy piece of shit,” I told him, more than once.
We both laughed but didn’t have the time to explore what we were missing.
I can’t say for sure but I think Florin and I are both doubting our own judgment. I sure am.
On the off chance that he found something deeper in my play that I never had the insight to intend, I’m now writing its sequel while thinking fondly of the Romanians I met and the beauty of the Carpathian Mountains I never intended to visit.
With apologies to the Bard out of context —
The play isn’t the thing. It really isn’t.
People are the thing.
Calin, Mirela, Vlad, Dave
I miss my new Brother, Florin, and his wonderful costars, Matei Chioariu, Calin Stanciu jr. and Marko Adžic. I wish very much I had left time in my schedule to visit with them longer than a few minutes after Opening Night.
I also miss the Romanian countryside: the canola fields and sheep crossings, the scenic villages of Transylvania, the towns of Sinaia, Brasov and the many convenience store clerks who tried in broken English to guide me back to my proper path.
I even miss the military official at the Serbian border who spoke sternly, yet kindly, about my directional stupidity as he sent me back to Timisoara to restart a day’s journey exactly where I had begun six hours earlier.
Nancy Webster 1949 – Grant Union High School, Sacramento
Carolann and I just returned to Dallas from a one week visit with our families in California. We had a wonderful time with our sons and daughters-in-law, our grandsons, aunts, uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers and assorted others.
That’s what family reunions are all about. We return home for the first time in years and laugh about old times. We share a bit about our current lives, embellish our common past and commiserate over how old and fat we’ve all become.
We can’t believe how big the kids have gotten.
We take pictures, have another drink and laugh some more.
We pay tribute to those of us who have died and when we finally say our goodbyes we share sincere hugs, promising we’ll do this again soon.
Sometimes we know that won’t be possible.
When I was a boy my mother was my queen and goddess. She was there when I woke up and tucked me in when I went to bed. She sang Doris Day songs while doing housework.
Que sera, sera…
Whatever will be, will be.
The future’s not ours to see.
Que sera, sera…
What will be, will be.
She cooked, she cleaned and she sang after making sure that I started each day with a single thought:
“This can be a good day or a bad day, it’s all up to you.”
— Nancy Webster-Williams
She kissed me good morning, fixed my breakfast and lunch and kissed me goodbye.
My little sister, Linda, Mom and me. Folsom Lake 1955.
Last Saturday, April 22, 2017, twenty of us – her children, grand children, great-grand children, siblings and extended family — gathered in a social room at her retirement home. Together again for the first time in many years we laughed and chattered and took a thousand pictures. We promised each other we’d do it again sooner rather than later.
At the end of the day when I hugged and kissed my mother goodbye she looked deeply into my eyes. No longer fuzzy headed, slightly confused or overwhelmed by the attention and the noise she said earnestly, “Take care of yourself, David. I love you.”
She said it twice for emphasis.
My brother Jim, sister Linda, me and Mom this past weekend.
She looked at me again and I looked at her. I’m 65 now but I was seeing my mommy of 60 years ago.
We both knew that it would be for the last time.
I hope I’m wrong but I don’t think so. I think we both know and we’re fine. We had a proper goodbye with just the love and none of the tears.
I’ll phone her more often now and I’ll spend less time talking about myself. I’ll talk about us.
I’ll ask her, maybe for the first time ever, to tell me about her life, her thoughts and feelings.
