Holy Mackerel! I’ve got it! The realization finally hit me. Like so many day dreamers or great pretenders , I wanted to be something other than what I am, an ordinaray man, the kind that, okay Cohn stop with the lyrics and get on with it. I wanted to be great, unique or famous for a talent or skill that people would know me for. I wished I could take photographs like Alfred Eisenstaedt or Robert Capra of LIFE magazine. Perhaps if I would have developed my intense love and appreciation of music I could have played the trumpet like Harry James or at the very least married a gal like Betty Grable. I feel I actually got my own Dolly Sister. She was my fantasy woman for many years! I wished I could have been a singer of popular ballads or even a Mario Lanza, but that’s not where my talents were.
Some people thought that I could have been a comedian or radio talk show host, but the two times that I entered amateur night contests I messed up my timing and did not feel comfortable. The audience concurred.
My singing in the shower probably is the cause for the need to regrout the shower tiles. Even the vinyl grout shrunk away from my voice. I do have the ability to take nice photographs but won’t go in for programmed enhancements or gimmicks to take prize winning shots. I do collect cameras, but no costly out of the ordinary ones. I enjoy framing a nice shot through the optical viewer for nice composition, but just for my own enjoyment.
I the 70’s I tried painting with oils and did a few nice Venetian scenic copies. I took two art courses at public night school in the evenings and at an art studio. A woman offered me $250.00 for my first picture but I refused to sell it. Mom was disappointed that I refused her offer. Years later when we had a garage sale before moving my next door neighbor’s house keeper bought it from me for the tidy sum of fifteen dollars. She knew good art when she saw it. By then the canvas had a dent in it from having a bridge chair lean on it for a few years. I stopped after two paintings for two good reasons. The first was the allergy season started and I became highly sensitive to the smell of both oil and acrylic paints and the second was that I was going out on my patio with my easel, palette, brushes a bottle of wine, a pepperoni and chunk of provolone cheese. The combination of the latter items made me break out in F-A-T.
Writing for me is a catharsis and wonderful way to express my feelings and emotions. I never intended for it to become more than a way to amuse myself and share it with the select group of people who I sent my writers club emails to. Notice past tense in sent because the group has decided to take a sabbatical because of lack of attendees. Some have moved away, have become incapacitated physically, or dropped out for their own reason. I will continue to write and grow as a writer on my own and still send out my work at irregular intervals to my friends who still want to hear from me. I write for myself and am happy to share with people who I care about and I hope care about me to some degree. I have been told that I write like I speak , and like I am- right from the heart. I tried some fiction and coming of age stories about dating and college days with a lot of poetic license and exaggeration. I enjoyed my short story from the perspective of a man whose wife passed away and how he worked his way back to living life again. That one is my personal best in my own humble opinion. Folks did not believe that it wasn’t autobiographical. Thank the Lord that it was not at all from my own experience, but just observation. Last week the attendees at the meeting BOTH decided to quit for either a while or a sabbatical depending on if there are other interested parties willing to commit.
This past Sunday I went into my personal rag bag in the garage to throw my soiled rags into the washing machine with my own cocktail of detergent,Oxy- clean and other stain removers(not that it would matter). All of a sudden the thunderbolt of brilliance hit me. What were the rags? They were mostly my old golf type shirts , buttons removed. BY Gad!, I know what I am the master of. I am King of the hill, the best, the undisputed heavyweight champion, IL maestro, el magnifico, tha Oscar winner. Are you ready? Those who dine with me can back me up.
I AM THE (world’s unrecognized) CHAMPION STAIN GETTER.
No matter what precautions I take, whether a fancy bib, table napkin, towel or extra napkin I manage to soil my shirt, sometimes trousers (at very strategic spots, like the fly zipper area). My wife can attest that no matter how I cover myself I get the fabric of our kitchen chairs. The color red is my specialty whether from wine, pizza, sauce, grease and oil from the finest olives in the world. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the late Paul Newman had heard of me that he would have banned me from using his salad products for fear of giving him a bad reputation.
When I went to business I preferred to work in proper attire including shirt , tie and jacket every day. When my wife took my shirts I to the cleaner the Asian woman said to her, Your husban, he velly sloppy eater”. Raspberries to her too! Who knows, maybe Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame used me as inspiration for the character Pig Pen? Perhaps Bed, Bath and Beyond got the inspiration for the 20% off coupon to get me to try all their stain removal products. QVC has some dandy stain removal products. I buy them all.
If I am the champion at getting the stain, my wife Paula is the undisputed champion at removing them. She has about an 80% success rate and gives up after three separate repeated treatments me that hw would have banned me from using his salad products for fear of giving him a p
and washes. She knows all about the fabrics from Hilfiger, Brooks Brothers, Polo , Greg Norman, La Coste, Josef Aboud and a lot of other brands. I listed the brands by size appreciation from the best fitting in ascending order in XXL for a tall guy. She does well for an accountants daughter from Brooklyn, N.Y.
My grandmother who loved me very much would say to me,
“ keep writing and getting stains until 120 years, with Paula at your side.”
I’ll Second That Emotion- there I go again with the song titles. Happy New year everyone.
