The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

The British Medical Journal just released a study confirming what most women and a few of us men already know: guys do stupid things. I know, it’s not exactly news, but this is Science, a powerful tool. Okay, only half of us believe in it anymore, but the newspapers have to put something in between the appliance ads and the comic page.

Nevertheless, it got me thinking about my own Great Moments in Jackassdom and I’m sure you got your own. Not all us males will risk our lives frivolously, whether from high IQ or low courage, but I’ve noticed plenty who do. A few years back a bunch of us South End yahoos were having a little bacchanalia off the backroads at a log cabin in the nettle savannahs. A few drinks, some medical herbs and next thing you know we’ve got a roaring bonfire lighting the sky to whoops and holler and general mayhem. At some point we haul out a couch and four of us (right, all guys) toss it on the fire sending sparks halfway to the space station. I don’t actually remember who initiated it, but some idiot (right, a male) decided to leap the conflagration. Then, at the encouragement of one particular female, others took a turn Fire Jumping, crazed drunken pheromone-incapacitated morons hurtling over a sofa in full toxic flame. Great fun!

I had worked in Everett General Hospital one 4th of July and I remember a guy we got in the ER who’d toppled into a fire and been dragged out by bystanders. He died that night. So when I saw my overweight out-of-shape artist buddy revving it up for his turn, I said don’t do this, man, but I could see he needed to impress the cheering lady and nothing I could say was going to deter him so whoopee wahoo! off he goes … and stumbles at the edge of the bonfire. I can still see him, arms akimbo, off balance at the launch pad, a silhouette aglow like a Bosch dream of Hell, another human sent packing to the furnace. He hit the ground all fours, tumbled to a landing to cheers and celebrations. I was the one weak in the knees.

We don’t burn as many couches these days. I don’t know if we’ve grown wiser … or the dumb have all been incinerated.

Little Jimmy, a buddy of mine who’s almost exactly the same old age as me, was reflecting on what he’d like to do when he retired. He’s a glass artist – same as me – and so I know, even if he doesn’t, the kind of retirement he’s dreaming of is just that, a pipe dream. There’s as much likelihood of golden years in a hammock beside a South Seas Lagoon as winning American Idol with a tin ear and laryngitis, but like most folks who gamble on a lottery ticket, the fantasy trumps mathematics.

He’s the kind of guy who itemizes his day, schedules his week, plans itinerary into the coming months and can tell you, by rote, the exact steps he’ll take into the coming years. I can no more imagine him poolside with a Cuba Libre beside his sunglasses on the cabana table slathered with tanning lotion reading a novel than I can see him winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Little Jimmy’s a List Maker. An organized, tightly scheduled Planner. He knows far ahead what he needs to do not only this morning but the morning Tuesday first week, next month. He’s the guy who made an outline before he wrote the essay in 12th grade history class and got an A+ with the teacher’s comments: well organized. I don’t need to look in his dish cabinet to know the bowls and glasses are neatly arranged by size and color. Chaos, to him, is MY cabinet, one step shy of disaster, mayhem and death.

Little Jimmy pulls out a tape rule last visit and shows me 80 inches. “See that?” I shrug in incomprehension. “What’re we measuring?” I ask. “Time left,” Jimmy declares. “If I live to be 80, slightly longer than the average U.S. male … and I’m 71 (he puts his finger at 5’11”, then this is all you and me got left, buddy, 9 inches.” He shakes his head sadly. “Time’s short now.”

Unlike most of us and me in particular, Jimmy’s hit the End of his Calendar. No more days no more months no more years. Just inches. He wants to get more done, he’s got to speed up the Line, blow more glass, sell more stock, finish 2023 by 2022, squeeze into that retirement before the tape rule hits 80 inches. They say dogs don’t understand death. I think dogs are like me — they get the idea, all right, they just don’t carry a tape rule strapped to their collar. I guess we’re a little too busy scratching fleas.

[podcast]https://www.skeeterdaddle.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/audio-American-Accountant-Audition.mp3[/podcast]audio — American Accountant Audition

Harry works down at the O-Zi-Ya Body Shop. He’s an artist with bondo, makes a ‘total’ look brand new after pulling the dents and replacing crushed quarter panels, has a real nice touch with an airless in the spray booth. Back about 4 years ago, Harry was a ‘he’. Six foot four, muscular in a lithe sort of way, moved car parts around like baskets of daisies. I didn’t know him real well, I guess, mostly because my beater cars never got treated to the Body Shop make-over. Dents, scratches, bullet holes —- I’m not spending money for pigs’ lipstick.

So imagine my surprise when Harry walks up my drive during our annual Mother’s Day Studio Tour … in high heels, a tasteful above-the-knee pleated skirt, grey blouse and a matching handbag. “How you doing, man?” I ask nonchalantly and Harry explains, no doubt for the 1000th time, he’s no longer a man. Course, judging by the 5 o’clock shadow of a beard, he’s not quite a woman either. Which, he tells me earnestly, will take the hormone treatments some time to kick in.

Even on the live-and-let-live South End, this was, well , this was … different. And we’re accustomed to different. Harry toured the studio and we chatted it up and when he left I gave him a manly sort of hug and said, “Good luck, man,” and immediately corrected myself. Harry gave me a wink and a laugh and sallied forth down the drive.

Harry quit the Body Shop — not because the boyz couldn’t deal with The Change — they still speak fondly of him. Her. You know what I mean. She wanted a new life to go with the new her.

A couple of years ago I ran into Harry. Harriet now. She was installing fountains. Hauled the rocks, dug the ponds, wired the pumps, plumbed the waterfalls. “I’m an artist, Skeeter” she declared. She was welding sculptural components, creating light shows, running her own business. “Life’s good, then?” I asked.

She broke into a radiant smile, one I never saw at the Body Shop. Leaning down to whisper in my ear, she fairly bubbled, “It’s a joy my boy, it’s a joy!” All I can say is the path to happiness is a whole lot harder for some, even on the salty South End, but it isn’t impossible.

Let me say right off the Get-Go, I’m no spring chicken, although my behavior might lead folks to think I’m in late-stage adolescence. I never went through a mid-life crisis, never left the mizzus for a college intern, didn’t buy a sports car and never thought I should’ve gotten a career … or even a job. In other words, I feel young.

Or at least did until these past few months, and no, it wasn’t Covid that made my bones feel brittle and my mind sort of squishy, it was all the folks around me who have cancers and aneurisms and busted appendixes and chronic back pains and diabetes and bi-polar disorders. For the first time in my 71 years on this planet, folks I know are dying, some younger than me, most through no fault of their own, just bad luck, crummy genes, who knows? Something in the water, toxins in the house, crap in the air, don’t ask me, I’m not a doctor and you couldn’t pay me to play one on TV.

But … mortality sits perched on my shoulder these past few months, a black crow or a shadow of one, a dark daily companion right out of Poe, hard to shake, impossible to ignore.

I just put my 98 year old father into an assisted living complex. Hard to feel bad for a guy who’s about to hit the century mark … unless you’re one of those who want to live forever. All I can say is be careful what you wish for. Quality of life diminishes a bit for the Methuselahs of this world. Volunteer at one of these places and see if you still want extended longevity when you piss 200 times a day and you eat more meds than food. Me, I’ll pack it in when the check-out time arrives and the maid needs to change the bedding for the next guest.

Not to sound morose, mind you, just that we all have a Best By date and I’m okay with that. But dammit, these early birds leaving lately, well, it’s a phase of life, apparently, that’s here to stay. Maybe I should consider that sports car after all….