IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

“There’s not a day goes by I don’t feel regret. Not because I’m in here, or because you think I should. I look back on the way I was then: a young, stupid kid who committed that terrible crime. I want to talk to him. I want to try and talk some sense to him, tell him the way things are. But I can’t. That kid’s long gone and this old man is all that’s left. I got to live with that…” said Red in Shawshank Redemption. Powerful words! I feel for Red every time I watch that scene, but that movie also conjures up questions about my own life.

A few years ago, some friends and I were sitting around, drinking a couple of beers and telling war stories of our youth. We covered all of our triumphs, our glory days, our conquests and even some of our bigger mistakes. At one point in time someone asked me, “If you had a chance to go back in time and change one thing in your life, would you do it?”

“Yes,” I said. “I would.”

Continue Reading »

Friggatriskaidekaphobia is the fear of Friday the Thirteenth. I am superstitious but I widely believe that Friday the Thirteenth is an invention of the movie industry. It does not exist. Therefore, I don’t believe that Friday the Thirteenth is a day of bad luck.

Last Friday morning, I woke up to the first cool and overcast morning we have had in weeks. The Piedmont has been ravaged by a heat wave that has brought unusually high temperatures, so to wake up and find the mercury hovering around seventy-eight was a welcomed sight. I had been neglecting the grass and the jungle that has been growing up around our house needed to be cut down to size. Cooler temperatures meant that I could finally mow the lawn.

I went into the garage and pulled out my lawnmower. When I went to fill the lawn mower with gas, I realized my gas can was empty. Frustrated, I trudged back into the house for my car keys and I was off to the local filling station. As I stepped up to the counter to pay for a gallon of gasoline, the attendant said, “Watch out, it’s Friday the 13th!”

Continue Reading »

There is a place in my house where I cannot sit. I cannot read there. I cannot think there. I cannot focus there. All I can do is laugh there. The last time I sat there I laughed so hard that my children had to inquire about what was so funny. But I could not tell them.

There are four pictures in the room that make it impossible to sit there. Like the classic paintings in the Scooby Doo Cartoons that have eyes that follow you everywhere, these pictures stare at you. Their expressions are comical. The irony of the situation is comical so that whenever I sit there, I can do nothing but laugh. It is because of those pictures that there is a place in my house where I absolutely cannot sit.

The first picture is on the window sill. It is a picture of our friend Angie holding baby Chloe in a rocking chair with a big radiant guffaw. She is laughing at me. She is questioning me. And as her gaze pierces me from the window sill, I feel as though she can read my mind. I have tried to look away, but I can feel the picture staring at the back of my head and I can see the laughter upon her face.

Continue Reading »

As I was driving along I-95 last month, I saw a clean-up crew dressed in orange jump suits working off their community service by collecting trash along the highway. As I drove past the gaggle of orange jumpsuits, I locked eyes with a young man in his late teens who had looked up to stare at the cars driving past him and something in his vacant glare struck me to the core…

As a sophomore in high school, my life changed drastically and I found myself at a crossroads. My mother had passed away and as the final months of the school year were ending, I had to prepare to move to a new town. Prep School and I were like oil and water, so my lack of friends was evident as I tried diligently to change my circumstances. So I started hanging out with a new group of friends.

Things were going well at first. I stepped away from my unique style in order to become one of the crowd and for the first time, I was finally playing by the rules. It was uncharted waters for me but it gave me a place to feel grounded while I juggled my changing landscape. And, I finally had a core set of friends.

One night, my friends and I decided to go on a pizza run. Ordering food and having it delivered at our school was against the rules. So the idea of ordering pizza brought along a new set of challenges. Pizza runs had become missions. If we got caught, we would be punished, we would lose money and there was always a lot of ridicule at the hands of our friends. A successful pizza run meant an after hours party in the dorm.

Continue Reading »

When I woke up on Christmas morning and saw the box in the corner of our living room, I shot Stephanie a disapproving look. The present was the size and shape of a flat screen television and although we had discussed buying one on many occasions, we ultimately decided against it until the time was right. So as the presents were opened by the kids, I tried to ignore the gift in the corner that seemed to grow ominously larger by the minute.

Finally, Stephanie said, “I would like you to open my gift,” as she pointed toward the box I had been ignoring.

“Steph…”

“It’s not what you think it is! Open it.”

I walked across our living room as I made one last plea to open it later after the kids had gone to bed. I didn’t want them to get too excited just in case we had to return it a few days later. Stephanie rolled her eyes at me as she excitedly said, “Just open it!”

Continue Reading »

As the house lights came down and darkened the theater before the second act began, a hush washed across the audience. As we sat in the silence, we heard delicate fingers dancing on the ivory keys as the hallowed white spotlight framed the cast of RENT against the backdrop of a darkened stage. As I visually grasped the context of the scene, the angelic choral began, “525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear, 525,600 minutes – how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes – how do you measure a year in the life?”

The poignantly painted imagery enveloped me in the moment and the lyric sent chills down my spine. It was a provocative, rousing, infectious and yet, an eerily ironic moment in the annals of my life. As I was winding down the final minutes of another year of my existence and preparing to embark on yet another 525,600 minutes of my own, I had recently been deliberating the same question; how do I measure success?

Later on in the evening as I sat in my family room and counted down the minutes to midnight, I thought about the past year and again I found myself contemplating how I measured my own achievements. Is it my career? Is my bank account big enough? Do I have the perfect house? The perfect car? The perfect life? Have I finally become one of the “Joneses?” And whether or not I have, is that enough? Or is there more?

Continue Reading »

“I want my two dollars,” I said mockingly in reference to the paper boy in the movie Better Off Dead as Andy and I stood up from the blackjack table. I had been winning for the better part of the afternoon and as I walked through the casino, I was excited about having won ninety-eight dollars. But I wanted more. I wanted triple digits. There was something magical about winning a hundred dollars that I knew would make for a better story.

We walked around the casino for a while and monitored some of the games that were being played. When Andy sat down at another table to play a few more hands, I couldn’t resist the temptation to add to my winnings. I sat down across from him and was pretty confident as I placed my first bet. Within minutes, I lost forty-eight dollars in successive hands. My luck had run out. So I stood up from the table and walked out of the casino with fifty dollars.

Logic dictates that I am supposed to want those two dollars when I gamble. It is part of the allure. It is scintillating. It’s electric! String a couple of good hands together and walk away with a fistful of dollars. Guess wrong and walk away empty handed.

Continue Reading »

There is a moment just before I fall asleep when I conjure up the most powerful prose I can ever imagine. Exquisite paragraphs that paint a powerful picture that would make Picasso proud and yet, these sentences have never graced the printed page. They exist at the moment my conscious and subconscious mind intersect and tantalize me with influential images and expressions that I am unable to replicate when I arise to write them down.

I have heard a lot about “living in the moment” on television, radio and in the newspapers lately and I am thoroughly perplexed at the vacuous meaning of the statement “to live in the moment.” I took a breath. That was a moment. I took another breath. There was another moment. And so on and so on. I live in the moment every minute of every day. And even if I try to escape the moment, I am living the escapism which is in fact a moment unto itself.

I believe what these gurus are trying to tell me is “that I must understand the importance of the quintessential moments of my life.” And that is a statement I completely agree with. Of course, that isn’t a sentence one can easily sell in a ten second sound bite. It isn’t flashy. It doesn’t have pizzazz and it isn’t chic. But worst of all, it is filled with big words that make being in touch with my life sound boring and dreadfully tedious. So I guess I am left with being told “to live in the moment.”

Continue Reading »

Last Friday, I went to see my doctor because I had been suffering from an earache for over a week and I was concerned about the tinnitus that was ringing loudly in the affected ear. I had been swallowing Sudafed every five hours over the course of the week and felt it was time to see the doctor for two reasons; (a) my ear still hurt and (b) I was concerned with the possibility of hearing loss which has normally been associated with tinnitus.

Upon my arrival, the nurse decided to check my height, weight and vital statistics because I hadn’t been to the doctor in a while. I thought it was odd that my height, weight and blood pressure would be involved in an ear examine but I didn’t bother to argue because it was the equivalent of having my mechanic check my tire pressure while he changed my oil.

When the examination was over, there was bad news and good news to report. The Bad News? It was an ear infection and required antibiotics. The Good News? I lost another eight pounds and I have apparently grown another half an inch. I was as perplexed as you probably are about the height gain but the weight loss was not that much of a surprise to me.

Continue Reading »

In September, a friend of mine expanded his DJ/karaoke business to a local establishment in the Quincy area. Before his first Wednesday night, he contacted a bunch of friends and asked us to come down and support him. It’s been fourteen years since I was in a band, so I didn’t need a lot of arm twisting to show up, especially after my experience in Disney World last February.

It was a large crowd of people that showed up that first night and we had so much fun, that we have been going back just about every Wednesday night since. One night in October, the tavern was packed full of people. It was a great crowd for the middle of the week and as usual, Bill called me up early to sing a couple of songs to warm up the crowd. I was having fun and I even let Bill pick songs at random to see if I could perform them without knowing what the song was before I grabbed the microphone.

During the course of the evening as I was walking back to our table after performing a song, I lost track of the waitress and wanted to refill my glass of Coke. So I grabbed my empty glass, walked up to the bar and asked the bartender for a refill. As I was standing there waiting for the bartender to bring back my drink, I felt a finger tapping me on my shoulder.

Continue Reading »