Happy New Year
Another one just went Pffssstttt. The calendars are hitting the floor faster and faster these days. And I don’t want to get old. I’m just not going to do it. And you don’t have to either. Big Louie, his own bad self, the Chief Mustard Cutter of the Louie-Louie Generation always says, “Inside every old guy, there’s a young guy scratching his head and asking what happened.”
When I was a very young guy, I met Tinkerbell in a book called “Peter Pan”…and I fell helplessly in love with her. I knew it wasn’t going to work out for us, because she was in love with Peter, even though she knew there wasn’t anything in it for her. She was a fairy and he was a human. No three bedrooms with a white picket fence around it in a set up like that. And besides that, he didn’t really care about her. All he wanted from her was her magic fairy dust so he could keep flying, beat up nasty old Captain Hook, and stay young. Like lots of guys, he was an immature jerk. But she loved him anyway…even though there wasn’t anything in it for her. Nothing. That’s love. Real love. Real magic. What Tinkerbell did for Peter is a lot like what my lady Wonder Wench did for me…when there wasn’t anything in it for her. I’ll tell you about that another time.
Magic lives. Not the pull the rabbit out of the hat kind. That’s not magic, that’s just a good trick. When I say, “Magic Lives,”I’m talking about Tinkerbell’s kind of magic. There’s a huge difference: Trick magic you have to see to believe. Real magic, Tinkerbell’s kind, you have to believe first, before you get to see it. Trick magic is great fun. Real magic keeps you young…and it makes you able to fly.
Some times the magic works better than other times. I don’t think it ever dies. But some times, I think it goes to sleep…Tinkerbelle runs out of fairy dust.
Or maybe she just gets scared. The book said that if we want to keep Tinkerbell alive, we’ve got to believe in her. And we need to let her know we believe by clapping our hands for her. I think the longer we’re around, the more we‘d better clap our hands for Tink if we don’t want to get old and crumbly. Because the more the physical stuff starts drooping, the more we need the magic to follow Big Louie’s advice: “Enjoy yourself. If you can’t enjoy yourself, enjoy somebody else.”
When you think about it, we all need someone to clap hands for us, to let us know that someone believes in us. What do you do at a concert, or a play, or a ball game ? You applaud the performer to let him know you’ve seen his magic, and it’s wonderful. You let him know you believe in him. If you didn’t applaud, in no time at all Mick Jagger and Tony Bennett, and Indiana Jones would become just another bunch of worn out old men dressed up in funny clothes. We all need someone to clap hands for us…even if we’re alone in life, and that someone has to be just ourselves.
I can still swing a pretty good softball bat, but these days I’m playing first base instead of center field. And I won’t be doing any more pop up slides. I’m a Louie-Louie Generation guy. That means I’m more than a few weeks past my springtime, and there’s nothing I can do about that…except keep believing in magic… keep clapping hands for Tinkerbell. That usually…not always…but usually works for me.
I’m looking at a couple of “Captain Hook” kind of things that will probably happen to me this coming year, including the probability that I won’t be doing my day job anymore. I’ve been working since I was 13…it’s going to be quite a change, And the fact that I’ll be saving gas money by not having to drive to the bank with my pay check any more somehow isn’t making me feel a lot better.
My oldest son David has been pointing out that with some extra time, I’ll be able to become the best small plane pilot at my airport. And maybe I’ll be able to finally sit down and write “Bedtime Stories 2.” And it would be nice to take a very long vacation with my Lady Wonder Wench. We haven’t done that in a long time.
And speaking of my LWW, yesterday when I mentioned being worried about getting old, she smiled, did that silk-ey legs walk of hers into the bedroom. And a few minutes later, she clapped her hands a few times, and naturally I went in there to see what she was up to. She had changed into something she likes to call, “A little more comfortable.” It was the outfit that I call her two piece…her slippers. She then issued me my minimum adult daily requirement of magic, love and fairy dust.
Magic lives. It seems like Tinkerbell sometimes runs out of fairy dust. But she knows where it is, and she knows how to get more…and she probably will if she thinks you believe in her. So I have a simple suggestion for any Louie-Louie Lad or Lady who is alarmed at the thud of another calendar hitting the floor. If you want to avoid being a youngster in a suddenly obsolete body, wondering what happened…if you want to learn to fly, and beat up the Captain Hooks in your life, and stay young…why not take a chance…one more time this year. Clap hands for Tinkerbelle. What have you got to lose ?
I’ll let you know how it works for me.
Happy New Year