Keep your hair on
I went to the movies with my best friend, Ilan, when I was 10-years old. “Dove” was playing. A movie about a teenager sailing around the world on a sloop. Alone. It was mid summer. We felt very grown up to buy our own tickets and get ushered to our seats. We wanted to be Robin Graham, the sailing teen who became a man during his 5-year journey.
The usher was a broad young man, with tight shirt sleeves that showed off his biceps and a shaven head. I had cool over-the-ears-and-curled-in hair back then and a hippy in my gait. When he told us where our seats were, we were talking. I asked him to repeat and he barked it out again. “Third row on the right!”
Now at that time a favorite phrase for ...I understand, chill, breath, you are an amazing human being, bless you too, everything is love...as I was saying, a favorite phrase at that time for “got it, thanks” was “keep your hair on”. What could be problematic with “Dude, keep your hair on!” spoken by a 10-year old privileged upstart to a simmering skinhead who has to serve him for a living? “Keep your hair on, man. I just didn't hear you first time.” Well. he crouched down to my ear level, and whispered in his Silence of the Lambs best “I will make sure that you hear me after the movie, jong. And I will be waiting!”
Right, got the setup? You will need to read the next blog to meet him outside. I have no recall of the movie at all. But the usher, I remember every detail imagined and real in that terrifying darkness.
Fast forward to our time and place. I’d been glued to NPR for four years during the reign of Donald J Trump. My senses were on hyper alert, the way they scanned the streets after the movie for angry biceps. With The Donald using his bully best to get his way, feisty emotions pulsed through me: Fear, revenge, self righteousness. In the frenzy before the inauguration, I thought I may need a 12-step intervention to ease back into a world I could actually participate in. Politics and pandemics were intoxicating surrogates to my lived life.
Thankfully, the tide turned on both of those monsters. But I took secret pleasure in the feelings of righteous disbelief and edgy anticipation, of taunting, shaming and sacking a bully king’s palace all from the safety of my truck radio.
Friends, this is not a diatribe on politics. Just lost my appetite for the news post Donald Tweet. It's a bore. I can tune in to news once a day, if that. Goodman Biden and Stats Covid leave me luke warm. (Well I do have the biggest crush on Kamela). Where once I had a noble purpose, I resisted, I resisted. Now I am in the middle of the tepid river, coasting downstream. What's there to do but finally rent the movie 'Dove' and actually watch it this time.
