Storytelling

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The Real Friendship Police of Dallas, Texas

What if you put a siren on the top of your car with different colored lights than usual, like pink and yellow? Then you drive down the interstate, follow a car, flash your sirens, and pull the driver over.

You start walking towards the car window and the person driving the car begins to realize you’re not part of the normal police. The driver rolls down his window. You tell him that you are a member of the Friendship Police.

 

You tell him that you would like to make new friends. After all, it’s a big city and it can be hard to feel included. You propose that the two of you might be able to hang out sometime, like maybe shootin’ some hoops or even going to a game. You tell the driver to expect to find a new friend request on facebook when he gets home. He is not angry or upset, but is instead mutually excited to meet a new friend.

The Friendship Police. It’s completely practical. And a great way to make friends to increase your number of friends on facebook. People will be impressed.

 

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Deviled Eggs are the Sushi of the South East

There are really only two ways to get authentic deviled eggs. A) Go to a “covered dish” church supper. B) Go to a family reunion. Deviled eggs are a delicacy, the sushi of the South. The key is finding a Southern woman who is willing to not only take the time to prepare them, but who also has the appropriate deviled eggs dish plate that keeps them from sliding around and tampering with the integrity of their presentation. And of course, as any deviled egg connoisseur knows, without the red paprika sprinkled on top, they’re simply just boiled eggs.

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Party Like It’s 1999: My Ten Year Class Reunion (Fort Payne, AL)


Last week as I mentioned to people here in Nashville that my 10 Year High School Reunion was coming up on Saturday, I was surprised to hear more than a few respond with, “Well I’m not going to mine. Everybody I want to see or talk to from high school, I already do. Most of those people I didn’t like then, and so I know I won’t like ‘em now.” Not one tiny part of me can relate to that statement.

On the same token, there have been times when I have hyped up an upcoming event in my mind for weeks or months, only to find my high expectations were not met. Again, this was not at all the case.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the Fort Payne Class of ’99 is a special group of people. Yes, I am being bias.

If the definition of a true friend is someone you can be apart from for years and the next time you see them, you can just pick up where you left off last time, then I have more friends than I realized. Because that was the case with everyone that was there.

I saw how warmly my wife was accepted by everyone there. (It actually reminded me of when I introduced her to my family a few years ago.) How often an official introduction wasn’t even necessary. Just straight to conversation like an old friend. That sort of instant familiarity with a large group of strangers is rare.

Ten years can definitely change people in a way I hadn’t considered; by bringing them to a more similar place in life than they were in before. Kristin Bailey Gardner works in journalism, whereas I am jealous that she is. Kim Thomas Clowers married my 2nd cousin, meaning we’re related now related and see each other at family reunions. And the should-be action movie star Morten Maaegard, the foreign exchange student from Denmark our senior year, was in the same parts of Thailand as I was in 2004. (He actually flew in from Europe for our class reunion- that is impressive.)

When an event this big goes so right, I have to take a look at why. Aside from a bunch of cool 28 year-olds all truly wanting to be there, a lot of it had to do with the planning. Tabitha Thomas Greenwood found and followed a formula that was flawless. First, during the day, we met at the new city park. That was a way that those with children could bring them and have something for them to do as the adults caught up on life.

Then that night just us adults met at an old yet restored hotel and restaurant in the crafty/artsy neighboring town of Mentone. Our senior yearbook was placed on a table along with a memorial of the four we’ve lost since graduation: Grant Dobbs, Derek Hood, Brooke Craig, and Joey Kean.

It was like a big house where after dinner we could just walk around and hang out as the band played. That was the ideal casual environment that kept everyone comfortable and in good spirits.

I have heard of class reunions where people had to pay $100 just to get in. Ours was affordable, practical, fun, and perfectly planned. We could have met in the Santa Fe room at Western Sizzlin’ (or The Sizzler as it’s known in the rest of the country). But no, the Fort Payne class of ’99 does things right. We knew not to play around with something as monumental as our one and only 10 year reunion.

There definitely is a dream-like quality about seeing so many old friends again after so long. Like a blurry Vaseline-on-the-camera-lens kind of feel. And because so many truly looked the exact same as they did in high school, it was kinda like a dream where we all just appeared in the same place and the only thing that really changed was the time in between the last time we were all together.

Eleven year reunion, anyone?

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Karaoke: Why the Heart of Rock & Roll is Still Beating

I love authentic Japanese karaoke machines that are made in China.

Last Saturday at my wife’s Christmas work party, they had karaoke going on down in the basement. I really had no intentions on participating, but when I realized that it rated the performance based on timing and pitch, I cut in line to be next. Putting my money where my mouth was from the first installment (http://wp.me/pxqBU-9u), I chose to sing “The Heart of Rock & Roll” by Huey Lewis and the News”.

It’s simply common sense that a karaoke machine advanced enough to grade a singer’s performance would also have decent quality music tracks. But the blips and bleeps of a Gameboy would have been better and easier to follow. All I could hear was a keyboard and fake drums. Not to mention the lyrics were a little off. The lyrics prompter said “now the old boy may be a bit off rhythm” instead of “may be barely breathing”.

I got a “67” out of 100.

The guy after me sang “Lean on Me”. Instead of “I’m right up the road, I’ll share your load”, the prompter read, “I’m a friend that’s kind of thorough”. I love authentic Japanese karaoke machines made in China.

Something that kept me distracted and laughing was the background images on the screen. I’m used to just white words over a blue screen. This one had actual video footage of completely random and unrelated things.

I just loved watching a mother duck and her ducklings eat bread crumbs at a park while my wife sang “Crazy” by Patsy Cline. And seeing an aquarium full of exotic and butt-ugly fish swim around while my wife’s boss sang “Jingle Bells”. And my favorite: While a 9 year-old boy sang “Eye of the Tiger”, we all watched footage of a lonely Japanese girl looking mopey at various venues: restaurants, lakes, and subways.

There’s just no wrong way to do karaoke. Because there’s not a right way.

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Constant Time Travel: Is There Such a Thing as “Right Now?”

When waking up from a dream I don’t want to be in, there is that pivotal moment right before my eyes open that I realize how wonderful life is.  Because I return to the comfort of reality.  Not trapped in an eerie sub-world with a grey and pink cloudy sky.

Similarly, I sometimes forget how old I am.  I often hesitate when people ask.  In the milliseconds before I answer, my mind travels through different ages I could be.  The most common:

“Am I seventy-five years old, with most of my life behind me?  Is my body aged and limited by decades of wear and tear?  Have I truly lived my life?  Have I been the giver I need to be?  Or have I lived my life selfishly?”

A millisecond later, the wheel has spun, and the arrow points to “28”.  I say out loud, “I am 28”.  Over a third of my life is finished, but that still leaves two thirds.

Like waking up from a dream, I realize I am still young, and I’m so grateful.  The problem is, despite hearing “hold on to your youth” and “enjoy this while you can” from older adults, especially starting once I graduated high school, I can’t do it.

I can’t appreciate “the now” anymore than I already am and have been.  In fact, I try to hold on to the present too strongly.  And then it becomes the recent past.  So then I’m holding on to the past and the present at the same time.  Almost to a fault.  It’s always been a part of who I am and how I think.

My senior year in high school for our “class prophecy” read aloud at Class Night, the day before graduation, my peers predicted that in 10 years I would still be living in Fort Payne, wishing I was in 1983.

I am a person known for my desire to want to freeze time.  Or ideally travel back to my younger years.  All my classmates were aware that even as a freshly turned 18 year-old, I romanticized about the 1980’s more than is humanly normal.

I feel time is going by too quickly and I’m not even 30 yet.  Like the forced moving screen on certain Super Mario levels, all I can do is keep moving forward.  And like love and money, there will never be enough time.