Little Bit Of The Past

Yesterday I was all sorts of behind. I woke late. It had snowed. I needed to shave, shower, write Morning Pages, dress, shovel, pack lunch, eat breakfast, and get to work. No way could I get it all done and still drive my daughter to school and myself to work on time. Damn it.

My wife rescued me by taking our daughter to school. I paused Morning Pages halfway and shoveled the snow, shaved, showered, threw some lunch together, ate a bit of toast, and walked to work. Fifteen minutes early, I finished the last Morning Page and a half. No harm, no foul, but I knew I had to get up earlier, if for no other reason, then to feel better.

Last night, after Syracuse Women's Basketball in the Dome, we returned home to an inch or snow of new snow. Despite the late hour, I shoveled to save having so much snow in the morning. I considered shaving and showering to get them out of the way, but my daughter was in the shower and I was too tired.

This morning, after a couple snoozes, I got up earlier. I wrote all three Morning Pages, shoveled off a dusting on the driveway and sidewalk, shaved and showered, dressed for work, made lunch and toasted bread. By seven I was ready, but my daughter doesn't need to go until 7:30. Which sent me back to a little bit of the past.

I'm typing in the living room while side three of Genesis' Seconds Out spins on the turntable just like it did most mornings while I was in high school. Side three is comprised of one twenty-four minute song, "Supper's Ready." Each morning I got up at least twenty-four minutes early to listen to that song. It was a comfort before high school, which I thought of as a kind of prison. I'd sit in my room alone with the music playing and...well, I don't even know. I'd just sit and listen. That was good. It was enough.

This morning is a nod to that past. I no longer go to school. The last ten years of teaching were far worse than the years I spent as a student. After dropping off my daughter, I'll go to the community center and it isn't just that I don't mind, it's that I kind of can't wait. I'm happy.

Today is Dad's birthday. He would have been 81 and last night would have gone with us to the Syracuse Women's Basketball game. He would have been happy about my new job. And this morning he would be up early to watch the plow guys do his driveway, have his coffee, and start the day. I'm in the past enough this morning that he's here with me just a little.

Being up early, going back to the past, and Dad's birthday are happy things for me. I doubt it's the same for my mother and brother who wake and remember in their own ways. Me, I'm up early, Seconds Out is into the "flute" solo just before "the gods of Magog," it's Dad's birthday, and soon I'm off to a job I love. All that and I've spent twenty minutes typing this. What a day.

You should see the smile on my face and hear this album. Both of them out of the past and into the morning. Both of them just right.

Scuffing

At a coffee shop waiting to meet a person, I heard someone else say my name. It was a guy I worked with when I was in college and he was in high school. We always got along, helped by a shared fondness for Springsteen's Tunnel Of Love and singing while we were supposed to be stocking shelves, filling propane tanks, cleaning, or helping customers with plumbing questions. I felt myself open into a smile and reached to shake his hand.

We talked like semi-old men. I asked about his girls, and he said that he had just been telling one of them about our old boss. I said, I've seen him around town a couple times. I didn't mention his red baseball hat that marks him as exactly the kind of man he was and always will be. I just said I'd seen him.

"He's still alive?" my friend asked, feigning shock. I nodded and admitted that I had avoided conversation. I hadn't even waved. He hadn't seem to recognize me or chose to act as though he hadn't.

My friend said he had told his girl about maybe the one bit of wisdom our boss had ever knowingly imparted to anyone.

It was back when my friend was walking around the store in untied work boots, clunking and scuffing along as was the style then (and maybe now too). Our boss called from his office, come in here. My friend went, expecting to be told to clean out the shed, vacuum the housewares section, or restock the pesticides, but no, our boss said, _don't let me hear you scuffing your boots like that. You sound lazy."

Our old boss had been wrong about many things, but both my friend and I agreed if you sound lazy, you might as well be lazy, and then forget about you.

When I taught kids who were all but labeled stupid, I told them to try and sound smart. If you sound smart, people may think you're smart, and that's almost as good because it gets you in with smart people which makes you smarter. On the flip-side, if your go-to words are fuck, nigga, and bitch, you sound anything but smart and the world will gladly treat you as such.

I heard arguments for the culture of those words, but they're the same arguments for scuffing boots. No matter what, these things project our identity and are how others project identities onto us.

My friend and I smiled at the story. The person I was meeting arrived. I shook my friend's hand again and he went on his way. The person I met had the feeling I was more capable than I really am. I've projected confidence. After our meeting, I walked out of the shop and across the street, my shoes tight against my feet, not scuffing even a little.