LIVING WIDE

We don’t all win the “living long” lottery, but sometimes we can remember to live wide…

I’m calling him Mister 95 because he’s taken 95 spins around the sun.  Well so far.  That’s 832,753 hours of playing in the sandbox and the school yard, falling in love, enlisting in the military, college, getting that job at NBC as a lowly page and then spending the rest of his career in show biz.  Eating, sleeping, growing a big family and deep enduring friendships, celebrating life, grieving loss and waking up in the morning.  Still.  Grateful.  Joyful.   Full…full enough to share the spotlight with you.  We know how it feels to be around a human being like that.

Mister 95 decided to put on a big birthday bash for his friends at the local retirement home where I teach ukulele. He reserved the auditorium…and… an additional overflow room with a video feed.  Because Mister 95 has a lot of friends.  Like almost everybody who lives there.

This variety show has three musical acts (including me) and a magician who is like “crazy good.”  After his set, the magic guy packs up his gear, leaving two doves and a rabbit in the green room because he loads them last in his climate-controlled SUV.  The rabbit is snoozing inside a top hat. The birds are sitting quietly on a chair next to me as I stare them down and wonder which one will poop first.  For the record, the birds hold it and I’m the one who has to sneak out to pee.

Mister 95 is all about audience participation.  In a very big way.  He purchased one hundred kazoos and distributed them to everyone with a ticket.  Apparently some residents complained that their kazoos were broken because when they blew through the hole, nothing happened.  So it was my job to teach them the right way to do this thing.  I presented a brief “show-and-tell-and-blow” demonstration before we launched into the song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”  Because…yeah…

Share a few seconds with a hundred kazoo-tooting grandmas and grandpas.  Click here to watch.

A few days later I meet Mister 95 before my Friday class. We are sitting on a hallway bench as he greets other residents passing by.  There are big hello’s all around and after they move on, he shares a short vignette, a splash of “something special” about each person.

This reminds me of a story I heard years ago.  It’s a traditional Sufi tale about a traveler who sees a wise man on the road and asks what kind of people live in the village up ahead. “I am looking to move from my present home.”  The wise man asks “so what were the people like in your old village?”  The traveler replies “oh they were mean, cruel, rude, so dishonest.”  The wise man tells him that “you’ll find the same kind of people here too.”

Later on, another traveler approaches the wise man and asks the same question and the wise man again asks about the people in “your old village?”  The traveler smiles and says “oh they are kind, courteous, polite.  Just good people.”  The wise man responds, “you will find the same kind of people here too.”

We see the world not the way it is, but the way we are.

🌺

I wrote special lyrics for the song ‘Proud Mary’ just for Mister 95 and his friends.  It ends with this stanza:

So come on over, drop on by and meet people who are living wide.
Yeah the clock is ticking.  The boat is sinking.
But we keep singing and staying alive…

Rolling, rolling, rolling down The 4-0-5.

If you are wondering, the “Four-Oh-Five” is a parking lot…er…freeway/superhighway/major coronary artery here in Los Angeles.  But no matter, make up your own.