A Letter to Norm/Aftermath

[I am posting two of Dorien/Roger's blogs today as they are so closely related.           --Gary]
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Norm: I hope I might have the courage to read you this letter before it is too late, though it is far easier to write a blog for the whole world to see than it is to speak directly to the one person for whom it is intended. But to do so is to admit to myself and to tell you that I know that you are dying…which we both of course know. But avoidance is one of the silly games we humans play.

I wanted to let you know how much you have meant to me these past 52 years, and how integral a part of my life you are.

I remember the August night in 1958, two months out of college, when I first saw you at the Haig, a bar near Chicago’s Lawson YMCA. We didn’t speak in the bar, and you left before I did, but when I walked out, you were standing there waiting for me. We moved in together less than a month later.

I remember how we built our couch from plywood—we painted it a high-gloss black, and used a foam pad, for which we had a cover made. I remember visiting thrift shops to buy tables and a dresser…the dresser I still use today. And I remember the 3-foot harlequin lamp we both loved when we saw it in a shop window, but could not afford it, and how, serendipitously, we found exactly the same lamp in a thrift store, its base shattered, and how we bought it and remolded the base. I had it, too, until I moved from Wisconsin to return to Chicago. I remember the small faun’s head I bought you one Christmas, which you still have.

I remember the party we had to which I invited everyone with whom I worked at Duraclean International, and how I broke my toe while we were all dancing the hora, and how we ran out of liquor and Phil Ward drank the juice from a jar of olives.

I remember how my parents adored you, and the time shortly after we got together when we all went to Maxwell Street and, as you and Dad were walking ahead of Mom and me, I realized “Hey, I think I love this guy.” I remember our trips to the cottage on Lake Koshkonong with our friends, and how we helped Dad build an apartment for us above the garage. I remember water-skiing, and ski trips, and the time, coming back to Chicago from the lake in my then-new red Ford Sprint convertible, you spent most of the trip rummaging through a huge bag of potato chips looking for the perfect chip.

I remember evenings of cards and games with friends. And the one thing I remember most is that we never, in our six years together, had a really serious argument.

Of course I also remember that it was not all idyllic. Your job took you on frequent business trips, often several weeks at a time, during which we both, being young, were promiscuous, which inevitably contributed to our parting of the ways. I remember your never wanting us to take vacations together on the basis that we were together all the time, and that I could never understand that.

And after we broke up...it was me who broke it off because my promiscuity got out of hand…I spent, literally, the next ten years kicking myself around the block for having hurt you, because I know it did, deeply. We had little contact over the next 25 years or so, seeing one another occasionally, exchanging Christmas cards, but it was awkward for both of us.

Yet you remained close to my parents, and were there for my dad’s funeral, but were away somewhere when Mom died and I couldn’t reach you.

And then when I decided, after nearly 40 years, to return to Chicago, I naturally moved in with you until I could get my own place, and our friendship, minus the romance, resumed.

You have been one of the largest stones in the foundation of my life, and I love you in a way impossible to put into words. You are my family and it is important for you to know that. But I fear I will not be able to bring myself to say so directly to you, because to do so would be to release you, and I simply cannot do that. You’re part of who I am, and will always be.

I will try to let you know. I promise.

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My friend Norm died at 12:35 a.m. Thursday, February 18. Despite explicit instructions to notify me immediately, I did not learn of it until I showed up to visit him at 2:30 in the afternoon. When I went to sign in on the visitor’s register and the receptionist could not find his name, I pretty much knew what had happened. When she went to check with a supervisor, who came out to tell me he had “passed away” (good LORD, how I detest that term!!!) I demanded to know why I had not been notified. She called the nursing supervisor, who was of course all apologies, saying “We called his brother” (in Wisconsin). That’s all well and good, lady, but you did not call me despite my having seen them write a note and my phone number as his Power of Attorney on the face of his chart.

I later called his brother, who apologized for not having called me himself, but said he was sure they had called me. He had indeed been called at 2 a.m. and asked “what do you want us to do with the body?” He told them that I had Norm’s P.O.A. and had made all the arrangements in advance, and told them to call me. He gave them my phone number once again. They did not call. Their explanation was that the Power of Attorney had ended at the moment of his death and I therefore had no legal right to do anything at all…which apparently included being notified of his death.

At any rate, it was all eventually resolved, and I walked the one block to Norm’s condo to begin the after-death detail work.

Norm has lived in his condo for 40 years, and though he is/was now dead, there are 40 years of his life within those walls: photos of friends and family, high school yearbooks, certificates of acknowledgment for service to his church, bowling trophies, drawers of paid bills and receipts and records. Paintings, artwork, little stuffed animals, countless “things” collected over the years, closets full of clothes, a broken plant stand he’d never gotten around to repairing, a collection of antique irons—the kind you heated on the stove—at least three coffee makers, a wok…and on and on and on. And all of them meant something to him. But to whom else, really?

His diploma from a school of horticulture and flower design, carefully framed, pages of detailed notes on his investment accounts, lists of his medications and which ones were to be taken at which time...but here I go again, off on another recitation of things which were all part of Norm.

But though all of them were Norm, most of them are now utterly meaningless to anyone else, whose lives are also and already filled with things.

So I select those things which I assume his brother would want—family photos, his parents’ framed wedding announcement, an ornate, gilded wooden cross—and set them aside. When I returned home Thursday, I carried with me the small Faun’s head I had given him for Christmas so very many years ago. His roommate, Eric, a wonderful and caring young man who had moved in to help Norm when he was no longer able to care for himself properly, told me Norm had said it was one of his favorite things, and that made me both happy and infinitely sad.

So Friday I went to the lawyer to begin the legal processes necessary to implement my having been appointed as the executor of the will. Then will continue the sorting out of things, the calling of an antiques appraiser to try to dispose of some works of art, furniture, etc. Then, when those are gone, the calling of an estate buyer to come in for what remains. Then the listing of the condo for sale, the decision of whether to replace all the carpets, scratched doors, torn wallpaper destroyed by Norm’s beloved Jack Russell terrier-from-hell, Jezebel, who lived up to her name, or to sell it as is. And given today’s housing market, even with a magnificent 35th-floor unobstructed view of Lake Michigan and the Loop, it may take a while.

But it will be over, eventually. And when I leave the condo for the last time, it will be empty, and whoever lives there next will have no idea of who Norm was. They won’t know, or care. 

But I will.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Simple Delights

Yesterday I received an email. Not exactly “Stop the Presses!” news—I just checked and see that my Gmail “in” box contains 24,441 of them—but this one triggered both my Little-Boy-delight and The-Past-Is-Now buttons.

The email was from Diane Kopp, a girl I worked with at Security Mutual Insurance Company…the second job I ever held after leaving college. Diane and I hit it off right away. She was charming and funny, and we became good friends. On a couple of occasions she joined Norm and me and some other friends on weekend trips to my parents’ cottage in Wisconsin. But as our friendship grew, I became concerned—probably wrongly—that I might be conveying the wrong signals to her, and so one day I told her that Norm and I were more than just friends. She was the first straight person to whom I admitted being gay…and I was 26 years old! (To reread that last sentence and see the word “admitted,” as though I was confessing to being an axe murderer or child molester, gives you an idea of the times in which gays and lesbians then lived.)

Diane took it all in stride, and we remained friends after I left Security Mutual, but when I moved to Los Angeles in 1966, we lost touch. I thought of her frequently throughout the years, wondering what had happened to her, whether she’d married and had a family. But there was no way I could get in touch with her...until, 50 years later, I got her message. And once again, the fraying ties to my past were reinforced.

I wrote her immediately, and hope we may pick up our friendship where it left off so many years ago.

We each have special people in our lives; people who hold a unique place in our minds and hearts even though we can’t pinpoint exactly why. Diane is one of those people, and I find it hard to describe how happy I am to have heard from her. I have been, in fact, extremely lucky to have had two other such reestablishments of friendship in the past six months or so. Ted Bacino—with whom I was in Cub Scouts at St. Elizabeth’s Social Center in Rockford, Illinois, and with whom I continued being friends throughout grade school, high school, and my first two years of college before I left for the NavCads—and Effie Foulis, another founding member of my college “gang.”

To reconnect with friends from long ago is, to me, indescribably comforting. It is a safety line in the increasingly blinding and frigid blizzard of years. And by clinging firmly to that rope, I can look back through the blur of years to see, however dimly, light from the windows of a world long gone, and feel the warmth it represents.

Each reconnection with someone from my past sets off a falling-domino-like cascade of long forgotten memories. People, places, things, visual images, smells, and a myriad of tiny details spring to life. Being reminded of shared memories through the other person’s eyes also sharpens the focus. (I mentioned that Diane and I had worked together at an insurance company. It was in the Loop, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember where. Diane’s note mentioned its being at Jackson and LaSalle. I still can’t picture the building, but you can be sure the next time I go to the loop, I will walk by Jackson and LaSalle and see if I can’t catch a glimpse of an oh, so much younger me going to work.)

I’m so grateful to Effie, and Ted, and Diane, and for their friendship over all these years. There are so many more old friends out there, waiting to be found.

It is the totally unexpected pleasant surprises, the serendipitous little pleasures and simple delights, which remind us what a precious gift we have in being alive.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Phil

Odd how the memory of someone you’ve not thought of in years will suddenly be sitting patiently on the front steps of your mind, as though they’ve just dropped in for a visit, and you are surprised at how happy you are to see them.

This happened with me last week when I suddenly found myself thinking of my immediate boss at Duraclean International, Phil Ward. My job at Duraclean, then located in Deerfield, Illinois, was one of the longest jobs I ever held...from 1960 to 1966. Duraclean sold franchises for a carpet and upholstery cleaning system which involved the franchisee getting down on his hands and knees and actually scrubbing the carpet. The secret to its success was in the cleaning foam, which for some reason could not be applied mechanically. I never could really understand how anyone would be willing to do it, but the company was quite successful.

The staff was small and a really nice group of people with whom I enjoyed working. One of my most vivid memories of working there, though, was one day in…what?…1961?…when the president, Grant Mauk, who later went on to run IHOP, came around to each of us saying that the company was planning to hire a black secretary and asking if we might object. Frankly, I was astounded by the question, but the early 60s were a very different time. She was of course hired and immediately became one of the family.

But I meant to talk about Phil, here. Phil was a very large man, heavy set, thinning hair, glasses, and a gap-toothed smile which he used often. My job at Duraclean was to put out the Duraclean Journal, the company’s trade publication for its worldwide franchisees. I was technically the Assistant Editor under Phil. I can’t recall ever having a nicer boss.

I remember going to him one time with an article for which I couldn’t find a finish. He looked it over and said: “Have you said everything you wanted to say?” When I said “Yes,” he replied: “Then it’s finished.”

Phil loved stories, and he had a wealth of them. He once told me of a job he’d had in which he had written an impassioned article on something or other, and titled it something like: “Framostats: Wave of the Future? Yes, say Experts.” He turned it in to his boss who so totally rewrote it that it came out with the title: “Framostats: Wave of the Future? No, say Experts.”

Phil had an absolutely charming, very attractive wife, Shirley, and a young daughter, Pam, and Phil doted on both of them. He announced proudly one day that Pam had learned to write her name, and a week or so later said that Pam had written a letter to her grandparents. A little puzzled, I asked: “What did she say?” He looked at me calmly and replied: “Pam.”

A year or so later, he announced that he and Shirley had gotten Pam a kitten. “It’s not much right now,” he said, “but you give it six months or so, and it’ll be good eatin’.”

Phil’s one quirk was that he could not use the restroom without turning on all the faucets in the sinks first. And he often forgot to turn them off when he left. I have no idea why, and I never asked, of course. I figured he was entitled to an eccentricity or two.

Having opened my own faucet of memories of Phil and Duraclean and the wonderful people who worked there and of who I was then and who I am now, I find myself tempted to just let it run. But I think I’d better turn it off for now, lest it overflow the sink and keep pouring out memories until they sweep me away.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Compared to What?

I’ve always loved, and often quoted, the anonymous (to me, anyway) bit of wisdom: “When people tell me ‘Life is hard,’ I’m always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’” Life, and our reaction to it, is inevitably one endless string of comparisons. We are constantly weighing ourselves on some sort of ethereal balance with the things and people around us.

Depending on one’s emotional makeup, this can either be a healthy and constructive way of judging and adjusting to our position in life, or a constant reminder of our own failings and shortcomings, real or imagined. It will come as no great surprise to anyone who has followed these blogs for any length of time to learn I tend strongly toward the latter view.

I spend a great deal of time being angry with myself, and for my egocentric insistence that I am alone in the world when it comes to feelings of falling short in nearly every comparison challenge. I seem to insist upon finding the bruised banana in every bunch. And I also have a tendency to be somewhat selective in those individuals and situations I compare myself to—invariably, it is to people/things I envy or want. I don’t usually compare myself with those who might objectively be considered to be my peers. (Perhaps this may be due in part to the fact that I have always felt myself so apart from others that the very concept of having peers is a little foreign to me.)

That I am not the only person to have difficulty with comparisons, or who always feels at the short end of the stick is hardly surprising. The fact of the matter is that few people have or take the time to consider things outside themselves and their own realm of existence. They still constantly compare themselves to others in a million different ways…jobs, wages, possessions (“Keeping up with the Joneses” is a classic way to describe it)…without really considering what they’re doing.

Eastern cultures are not nearly so concerned with the need for constant comparison; their philosophical bases are very different from ours. They tend to see the world as a level playing table. Western cultures are more likely to see the world as a ladder. It’s in our nature to look up the ladder to the next rung. Whatever we have, there’s somebody who has more: more money, more talent, more possessions, more power. And we’re never happy until we have it, too. (And then when we get it, the cycle repeats itself endlessly.) Comparisons, by their very nature, lead to dissatisfaction.

Our society is pretty firmly rooted in greed, and as a result, the deck is stacked against the person doing the comparing. We seldom compare ourselves, or even give any consideration to—though we should—people who are a few rungs beneath us on the ladder. For far too many people, it’s not what we have, it’s what we want.

When it comes to comparisons and the resultant problems of low self-esteem, the negative power of television has no equal. Everyone on television—both women and men—is young and beautiful, and rich, and knows exactly what to wear and how to act in any given situation. Stare at any primetime soap opera for an hour and then take a look in the mirror. Recent studies have shown—stop the presses!—that low self-esteem and many of the serious problems affecting young women, from anorexia to bulimia and on down, can be traced to the false ideals of “attractiveness” they’re constantly exposed to on TV. Wow! Talk about an “I didn’t see that one coming” revelation!

And men are not immune. Why do you think spammers make fortunes on products guaranteed to “make her scream with pleasure” (pardon me while I projectile-vomit)? That men love porn is hardly a revelation, yet even though the men in porn movies are not the intended focus of attention, they always seem to be far above average in the “endowment” department. How can poor Sam Schlub, after watching a porn flick, expect to compete?

Comparisons are an integral and important part of life…they act as a sort of compass guiding us through existence. But it is time we began putting things in perspective. We can start with the simple realization that each of us is only one human being trying to measure ourselves against nearly seven billion others. And with those odds, there’s absolutely no contest: you’re gonna lose. A little more self-acceptance would vastly relieve all the unnecessary grief we put ourselves through every day, and greatly simplify our lives. Then we can switch our attention to things that really matter, like whether Tiger Woods will reconcile with his wife, or whether Paris Hilton will survive her brave battle with her most recent hangnail.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Pebbles II

My mind is a seashore strewn with the pebbles of random thought. As I did when I lived near Lake Superior, I wander up and down the beach with no clear goal in mind, idly collecting them. What there is to attract me to a particular pebble of thought I don’t know, but something causes me to notice them, and I bend to pick them up and study them carefully for a moment before letting them drop back onto the sand and moving on. Sometimes I remember where I dropped them, and return to pick them up, but mostly they’re just there and then they’re gone.

My days are made of pebble moments. Most are just passed by, relatively unnoticed, but some are picked up to become emails to friends, or the inspiration for blogs.

Two of today’s pebbles are cases in point. And though I had a reason, at the moment, for selecting them from all the others, your reaction as to why I chose them might be more one of puzzlement than enlightenment.

The first pebble was sent as an email to my friend Gary. It involves my cat, Crickett, who has developed cancer in her left rear leg at the site of a past rabies shot. The vet says this is not uncommon, and Crickett is, after all, around 17 years old…I can’t remember exactly, though I’ve had her since she was a kitten:

“Crickett’s leg is now all but useless. Today, as I was sitting on the couch, she tried to jump up to be with me. She could not make it. I leaned down to pick her up, but she yeowled…the first time she’s done that. I put the empty box the printer had come in on the floor up against the front of the couch, so that she could jump up on it fairly easily, and from there jump to the seat of the couch. She did not grasp the concept and refused to use it, instead walking around it. She made another one-rear-legged jump and made it this time, by digging her claws into the couch and pulling herself up.

“I’m now giving her medication every other day in hopes that it relieves her discomfort. I wonder if she knows she is dying. I know.

“Life is not easy.”

Earlier in the day, I’d gone to buy a new printer—the box for which being referenced above—my old one having given up the ghost. Though I knew it was dead, I kept delaying the inevitable (I am quite good at that) in the hopes that the next time I went to use it, it would work fine. It never did. Went to Best Buy, which is my nearest electronics store, and looked at endless rows of machines with prices ranging from $49.00 to God-knows-what. To me, they all looked identical. There were two HPs side by side. One for $69.00, one for $79.00. 

On reading the little cards that accompany the price tag, I noted that the $69 one seemed to have more features/advantages than the $79. When I pointed that fact out to a clerk, he told me that the $69 one was on sale, though there was no indication of that fact anywhere. When I asked the original cost, I was told it was $89.00 but, on checking, he amended that to $99.00. So I bought it, brought it home, managed to install it all by myself—no mean feat, I can assure you, given my total alienation from anything with moving parts or that requires plugging into a socket, and it’s worked quite well so far. (I always find it necessary to modify positive statements.) There is even a little digital display like a tiny TV screen which guided me through the installation process and thereafter advised me on the status of my printing and scanning. Probably it was the glow of that little digital display that attracted my attention to this particular pebble. See it?

Ain’t science wonderful? So are pebbles.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Potpourri

Whenever I make the mistake of turning my back on my mind for ten seconds, it inevitably goes running off wildly in all directions.

I was waiting for a bus the other day when a very short, balding little man with a horseshoe of white hair around his pate and an absolutely huge pot belly walked past carrying a briefcase. My immediate thought was: “I am May-or of the Munch-kin Cit-ty.” Go figure.

From there I for absolutely no reason thought of a place called “Preview House” in Los Angeles. People would stand out on busy street corners and offer you free tickets to see and rate TV pilots. I made the mistake of taking one.

Preview House was a very nice theater, with each seat having a small hand-held control unit with a dial and ten numbers, with which we were to record our reactions. Once everyone was seated, an unctuously hail-fellows-well-met M.C. (or whatever it was he was supposed to be) appeared on the small stage in front of the screen to welcome us and say that we would be seeing two prospective pilots on which the networks would like potential audience reaction before scheduling them in prime time. To enhance the verisimilitude of the TV-watching experience, he advised us they’d also be showing some new commercials as well, and that we should rate them also. He gave us detailed instructions on dial-turning, which he apparently assumed most members of the audience would find difficult to grasp. The houselights dimmed and, the commercials began. Lots of commercials: it seemed like ten or twelve of them, and we all duly rated each one. Finally the first promised TV pilot began.

It was obvious from ten seconds in that this was not only the most God-awful television program ever recorded but that it had, in fact, been recorded some ten to fifteen years earlier. But there were the requisite “commercial breaks” for another endless string of commercials. I was amazed that no one got up and left the theater after the first fifteen minutes of the show. I guess, like me, they were thinking the second pilot would be better.

If possible, the second show was even a greater stinker than the first. At last it was over, and I and everyone else rose in great relief. But the M.C. hurried back on the small stage looking distraught, and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am horribly sorry to tell you this, but there was some malfunction with the equipment recording reactions to the commercials, and we’ve lost it all. We feel terrible about this, but could I please implore you to watch them again?”

I suspect that the doors were locked had anyone actually tried to leave, but the guy was so very sincere and gave the impression that if anyone didn’t want to help him out, here, he might well lose his job. So we all sat back down, watched the 30 or so commercials again, and re-entered our reactions to each one.

Thanking us profusely for our cooperation, the M.C. bid us a good night.

Six months later, a friend who had never experienced the joys of Preview House said, “Hey! I got us free tickets to Preview House! Let’s go!” So, against my better judgement, I went.

Need I tell you that we were treated to exactly the same execrable pilots, though of course the commercials were different. When it ended, everyone started to get up, but I did not. I knew what was coming. The M.C. appeared and said: “Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m horribly sorry to tell you this, but….”

For you see, boys and girls, the entire purpose of Preview House was to help advertisers determine which commercials worked and which didn’t. And by forcing us to sit through them twice, they were able to tell whether our opinion of the product being touted may have changed…hopefully improved by seeing it more than once.

I gave each commercial the lowest possible rating the second time around. I don’t think they cared.

I never went back to Preview House, but if you ever get to Los Angeles, watch for someone on the street passing out free tickets…and tell them “No, thanks.”

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

The Pleasures of Drear

Don’t let the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any such word as “drear” bother you…it’s a nice word which should exist even if it doesn’t.

Today was what undoubtedly most people in Chicago consider to be dreary (get the connection?): heavy, heavy overcast, drizzle and light rain mixed with torrential rain mixed with wisps of fog, chilly winds…sort of a picnic-on-the-moors, Hound of the Baskervilles day. And I love it.

I’ve always liked it when Mother Nature shows emotion. Anybody can enjoy sunny skies and puffy clouds and warm, gentle breezes, and I like them, too. But it takes a special outlook to be able to appreciate days that drip with lugubriosity (I just made that one up, too). One of the reasons I left Los Angeles was because that was about all there was: sunny skies, puffy clouds, etc. Every single day was June 25. You could plan a picnic six months in advance and be almost guaranteed that it would be a sunny day with puffy clouds and warm breezes. Los Angeles days tend to be like one of those perky little blonde cheerleaders who is just always so…well, perky…that you want to throttle her.

Ah, but “drear” has its own quiet pleasures. Living in a high rise isn’t quite the same as being at ground level, where one can watch the trees outside the window swaying wetly, or the water running off the eaves. But standing at my 9th floor window looking down at the umbrella’d people scurrying along the glistening streets, cars’ tires like the bow of a ship sending up little sprays of water to each side, neon lights reflected off the sidewalks, the passing elevated trains shooting off sparks from their wet wheels on the electrified track…it’s all very comforting, somehow. It’s rather like my other favorite calmative pastime, walking through a cemetery, reading tombstones.

Drear provides the backdrop and sets the mood for quiet contemplation and reflection, and if there is the sound of rain to create background music, all the better. Granted, some fine-tuning is required to keep out the static of regrets and missed opportunities, or errors made, but once you’ve got everything right on pitch, it’s wonderful.

I also enjoy, still using music as an analogy, when Nature segues from quieter contemplative pieces featuring fog and overcast and rain to the full orchestrals of storms: booming tympani of thunder, cymbal crashes of lightning, full-brass of wind and fierce rain…watching the trees, as if caught up in some frenzy of emotion, whipping back and forth. I love it!

I remember once, as a teenager, during a terrific thunderstorm in the middle of a summer night. I got out of bed to stand in front of the open window and watch it. I was between the drapes and the window for a better view. My mom came in to close the window, thinking I was asleep. When she moved the drapes aside to get to the window, I scared the wits out of her, poor thing. (And you see? Even thinking of that on a day like today gives me pleasure and comfort rather than the sorrow of knowing it could never happen again.)

Life is full of drear. It’s how we see it and react to it that makes the difference.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

You Is or You Ain't

I decided it was about time I wrote a funny blog, filled with my own special brand of wit and clever wisdom. So I sat down and wrote about 36 first sentences. They were about as amusing as the lead sentence in an obituary. I have come to the conclusion that there are certain things in life that one simply cannot do by just deciding to do them: keep your eyes open while you sneeze; go to sleep when you tell yourself to; not looking at the clock every two minutes while laying in bed wondering what time it is and why you aren’t asleep yet; and deciding to write a funny blog. Can’t be done. When it comes to being funny, you either is or you ain’t. And today, apparently, I ain’t.

Laughing has always been one of my favorite things to do, though my personal humor runs more along the lines of quirky tongue in cheek than out-loud guffaws. I love guffaws. I love laughing so hard I have to grasp for air and my stomach hurts. On reflection, I haven’t done that for quite a while. No idea why. Maybe all this Iraq/Iran/economy/Who-the-hell-gives-a-damn-about-Britney-Spears/mean-spirited Christian Fundamentalist nonsense has just overwhelmed me. Guffaw-funny seems to be in tragically short supply of late.

Oh, there’s plenty of it left. There are tons and tons of rolling-on-the-floor-laughing things around…except when you need to reach out and grab a few to stick into a blog.

The world seems to have gotten much too serious for its own good. I always enjoyed the definition I once read of Puritanism: “Puritanism is the deep, abiding fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun.” I’d say we were becoming a nation of Puritans, but the fact is that we are a nation founded by Puritans and we largely remain Puritans.

Political Correctness has become an 800-pound gorilla in every room, grabbing anyone who dares to make a dumb blond joke by the neck and throttling the life out of him. The fact of the matter is that there is not one single thing that can be said to which someone, somewhere, cannot and will not find offense. Alexander King’s classic comment on obscenity applies to those who take offense at everything: “There are those who see obscenity in the crotch of every tree.”

I can’t think, as a matter of fact, when I had my last really good laugh, let alone a guffaw. I would certainly hope much more recently than I am able to recall at the moment. Again, I’m sure it’s just because I’m trying to think of an example that I cannot. My mind has a sense of humor of its own and apparently takes considerable delight in not cooperating when I ask something of it. I want something funny and instead I get mental images of babies starving in Darfur.

Fortunately, it hasn’t always been like this and I know it won’t be like this forever. But at the moment, I do have to stretch back quite a while to even remember a specific good laugh.

I do distinctly recall the time when I was in about the sixth grade, sitting in a very hot classroom on a late fall afternoon. A large housefly wandered casually across my desk, too sapped by the heat and humidity to be very enthused about anything. I remember “walking” my fingers across the desk until they were right behind the fly, who didn’t seem to notice or, if he noticed, to care. Very carefully I reared back my index finger and booted him in the rear end. He fell off the edge of the desk and managed to fly off just before he hit the floor. I spent the next three minutes laughing. Neither the fly nor my teacher appreciated the humor of the situation, but I didn’t care.

Maybe I should look for a fly to boot in the rear.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, “Short Circuits,” available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com. 

Gratitude

Gratitude is something far more commonly felt than expressed. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that the words “Thank you”—the two words most used to express gratitude—are an automatic social and cultural response to even the smallest favor, from a “gesundheit” to being handed a receipt at a check-out stand, and often seem inadequate.

“Thank you” is just the thinnest surface layer of gratitude. Under “Thank you” lie an infinite number of layers, depending on the degree of gratitude felt, and the deepest layers of gratitude can never be adequately expressed.

Gratitude is a tree which grows from the seeds of kindness, and kindness is freely given without thought of repayment. But I consider gratitude to be a form of acquired debt which must be repaid. Far too many people, if the concept of gratitude being a debt even occurs to them, repay it with I.O.U.s or promissory notes.

I realize that I do far more bitching and moaning and complaining than is warranted by circumstance. I talk endlessly about what is wrong with the world (and there is much to talk about), yet very seldom express my equally boundless gratitude for the positive things in my life and in the world.

First and foremost, my gratitude for having been given, and still having, the gift of life cannot possibly be put into words. That gratitude is followed closely by my gratitude for my relative good mental and physical health. Despite my share of physical problems, I realize that compared to what others go through, mine, as Humphrey Bogart says in Casablanca, don’t amount to a hill of beans. Which doesn’t stop me from complaining anyway. I am what I am.

I am also infinitely grateful to having been born into the family I was. There are no words or combination of words capable of conveying my gratitude to my parents. How could there possibly be, when I owe them so much? Every member of my family, from my grandparents through my aunts, uncles, and cousins, have never been anything but completely loving and supportive, and I realize that there are, tragically, many people who cannot say the same. And though my parents and most of my immediate family are now gone, my gratitude to them for having them to enrich my life remains undiminished.

Beyond the circle of immediate family is another circle, of friends. I am grateful to have been blessed with an extended family of wonderful friends who shore up my fragile ego and are unfailingly there when I need them. That they also put up with my…shall we say, “minor eccentricities”…and constant complaining is proof positive of the incalculable value of friendship.

One problem with expressing gratitude is, in fact, in finding how to do it properly and proportionately. Too-frequent and too-effusive expressions of gratitude soon lose their effectiveness and become the equivalent of a “thank you” given someone who holds a door open.

I’ve come to the conclusion that perhaps the best way to express gratitude is not through words but actions. Small gestures: a phone call, a sincere compliment, an invitation to coffee or a movie or dinner can speak more clearly than words. Something so small as being willing and making yourself available to listen to problems which may not directly concern you.

Gratitude is too often overlooked as a real and valid emotion, yet it, our individual awareness of it, and how we each respond to it, help to shape and define us as human beings.

And in case you were wondering, I’m grateful to you for reading my blogs.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: 

Alice Ghostley

Everyone who remembers Alice Ghostley, please raise your hand. If you’re old enough to remember the old “Bewitched” show, she played Esmeralda…and also appeared on “Designing Women.” Once you saw her, you never forgot her face or her voice.

I first saw her on Broadway in the revue New Faces of 1952 (which also launched the careers of Eartha Kitt, Robert Clary of “Hogan’s Heroes” and a number of other rather well known performers). Alice was wonderful, and I can still sing…albeit badly…every word of her solo number, “The Boston Beguine” (“I met him in Bos-ton, in the native quar-ter; he was from Har-vard, just across the boar-der....”).

She died last week of colon cancer at the age of 81, and I am truly saddened by her death.

So very, very many celebrities…once household names…whom we watched in our favorite movies or listened to on radio: so much truly incredible talent…are now all but forgotten. Danny Kaye, Kay Keiser, Lionel Barrymore, Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable, Sidney Greenstreet, Phil Harris, Fred Allen, Fibber McGee and Mollie, Hattie McDonald…there’s not enough room to list them all.

Each one of them brought pleasure to tens of millions of people, and it is awesome (to me) to realize that not only are the stars now gone, but most of the entire population of the world who were alive during their heyday!

I do not grow old alone: I’m part of an entire generation…a huge block of, again, tens of millions of people who are now the same age as I, if they are alive at all. All the beautiful young men of my own generation, for whom my chest ached, are now no longer young nor beautiful. My friends, my family, everyone who in my heart and mind are exactly as they were so many years ago have also been subject to time’s rational but unkind forward march.

Is it any wonder why I so resent reality?

When I sit behind the information desk at my part-time weekend job at the Century Shopping Center, I watch the beautiful young men coming and going from Bally’s gym (oh, and there are of course beautiful young women as well, though they are largely invisible to me, just as I am invisible to younger gay men), I find no comfort in their total, blithe ignorance of the fact that as I was once them, they will be me. Life comes equipped with blinders, and the young have absolutely no doubt that they will be young forever. Or, if they are aware of it, they consider it so far down the road it isn’t worth giving a thought. The grasshopper and the ant.

And if you never had the pleasure of seeing and/or hearing Bea Lilly, or Fanny Brice or Rosalind Russell, or Richard Egan or Robert Stack or…you have been robbed. There are few things more irritating than hearing some “old fart” saying “Now, in my day…”, but don’t sell them short. Fifty years from today, who will remembering the likes of Britney or Kevin or P-Diddy-Whatever or The Smashing Pumpkins? It ain’t the same, kid. It ain’t the same.

Alice, I miss you.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: