Life Is A Crazy Thing

Dare to the level of your capability then go beyond to a higher level.

Alexander Haig
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Yesterday afternoon I was talking with my neighbor Ken. He's 77, smokes cigars and drinks beer. He's been married twice, has three daughters here and there around the country and a bunch of grandchildren. He currently has a lady friend who lives nearby. He works around the neighborhood, tending to people's property, cleaning up the sidewalks, fixing things, taking out the trash, tending gardens, small paint jobs, things like that. He tells of an interesting life traveling all over the country, time in the Navy. When his car broke down in Texas he got a job with the mechanic to pay for fixing it. Then he sold it to the mechanic, bought a pickup and headed north.

As I listened to him I thought back on my own life. I am a crazy man. I've always been crazy. When I was a preschooler I amazed people by climbing up to the top of a diving tower and jumping into the lake feet first while the other kids were diving from the low diving board. It made sense to me. Not knowing what was at the bottom of the lake I wanted to find it with my feet instead of my face.

In Elementary school I loved climbing trees as most boys did. I would climb to the top of a pine tree, jump out on to a branch and ride the branches down one after the other until I reached the bottom as my buddies watched. I got a lot of pine needles in my underwear but it was worth it.

In Junior High School I climbed a brick wall because my buddies said it couldn't be done. When I finally sat up on the cement top they were amazed.

In High School I was elected editor of the year book and student council president on the same day. I gave the year book job to the second place winner who messed it up. Big lesson there.

Bored with college I took off and hitchhiked across the country, from Boston to Los Angeles even though everybody said I was crazy.

When I got back home I began a career as a performing artist in the entertainment industry. My family and others said it wouldn't work. I played a wide variety of characters, including a bear. I've done musicals even though I never learned to sing and dance. Even after I retired my family wanted to know what I had retired as.

I confess, with no sense of shame, that almost all of the things I did in life I did because I was bored.

Now I'm 71. I have trouble walking and I have to read with a magnifying glass. Whenever I'm tempted to feel sorry for myself I think of people like Stephen Hawking who can't speak and can't move but who is still a world class scientist, physicist and cosmologist. He won't quit. Ken won't quit. He enjoys his life too much. And I won't quit. I'm still bored. I've written two novels and am working on a third as well as a bunch of short stories. I hope to publish them some day, as crazy as that may sound to some people.

I have an apartment full of paintings and I'm working on a new one. Maybe they will find their way into a gallery some day.

I am an uneducated scholar, a writer who flunked English class and a desperately near sighted painter. What more could you ask for?

DB - The Vagabond
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SUMMER QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)

Who are the 2 (two) most important people alive today? Why?

Only 8 responses so far. Summer is about to close her gates. Get with it. Don’t be left out in the heat.

dbdacoba@aol.com

Thank you.
DB
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