Happyday Thoughts: Yet Another Pretentious Portmanteau (YAPP)

 

Happyday Thoughts: Yet Another Pretentious Portmanteau (YAPP)

 I have been spending some spare time (not as expansive as my spare tire) thinking about people I have met and benefitted from over the years. My first realization (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP8qXnnn4tc) was that there too many to name and thank. I grew up in East Tennessee, having moved from LA (Lower Alabama) and headed West (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAgWklREPWI) to the Air Force Academy in Colorado after high school. And then it was off to a depressing and very short career as an intelligence officer during the Conflict in Vietnam … ‘conflict’ is much softer than ‘war’ … but people died … (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iyng_cdupo8&list=RDIyng_cdupo8&start_radio=1&t=11). Three marriages, five children and six grandchildren later (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9NACZ8BxE8&list=PL-haAX7WTpwmviOUc4cxaca4xzUoWagrW&index=7), I got to thinking about people I had met and how they had managed to affect me … mostly in positive ways (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flLoj5qxURw). What this reminiscing leads me to is an overwhelming conclusion (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/44212/the-love-song-of-j-alfred-prufrock) – namely, that there has been time to wonder, time to ponder, time to look under and over and beyond myself … time to become someone else … not just a fly-boy, not just a fly-by-the-night boy, but someone who can pause and see the night sky, with one hand waving free (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeP4FFr88SQ), lend a helping hand to those who think they know more than they could possibly know (https://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=01286), to those who cannot pass over in silence what cannot be said (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5740), to those who talk high but walk low, with head held high when it should be bent in shame, but I digress, I have to roll  the bottoms of my trousers … I have to pause and thank the countless people who have enriched my life and help me become the person I am becoming … a “pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas” but a pair of helping hands, applauding those who have helped me become a slightly better person … so many, in so many different ways, large and small, I remember them one and all … well, probably not all, my memory is not as sharp as it used to be … as my wit got sharper my memory grew more dull … such is life … it is meant to be lived … to be full of wonder and love and things one could not dream without help … from above and from below … a toddler tugging on those rolled trousers … how can one possibly say thanks?

mike