Come on home

I had a long conversation with a friend of mine the other night. The setting was the same as ever for me and I thought nothing of it...

I was working on a walking stick on the front porch when sounds of an approaching car came down the driveway. I sat back and watched it pull up, park, and then an old friend step out. I had not seen the guy in years, the last I heard he had moved away and started a successful business. I met him halfway to the house, we shook hands and started talking right there. An hour or so later we moved to the porch.

We were drinking tea, the southern way, and James was running around the yard armed with multiple toy guns. As James went from fort to fort in his defense of the yard from bigfoot and zombies, my guest began to regale me with tales from the past ten years or so of his life...

I listened and shook my head as he told me of his travels around the world. I admit, I was jealous. He spun stories of going to different countries and the sights he had seen, he showed me pictures of his kids and built a pretty nice portrait of a successful business he heads. His clothes were just so, his car a mercedes, his home straight from the pages of southern living magazine, and his family looked as if they had all been "carved from cream cheese" to quote a movie. I filled him in on what I had been up to and showed him around the leaky, rusted out home I live in and then we went for a ride through the woods on the kawasaki mule.

It probably took two hours or so for the persona he had allowed to take over his personality to fade away and his true self to return. By the time we were circling the lake on the kawasaki he was laughing the same way he did in highschool. When we were shooting pine cones on the lake with bb guns he was practically twelve years old again. By the time we returned to the porch he was barefoot, had his pants rolled up to his knees, was muddy and looked ten years younger. When he first got there he moved away from the dogs as they jumped on him, but now he was playing with them on the porch, in all their dirty, pond water glory....

I took a piece of poplar out for him, handed him a knife and gave him a crash course in carving, he wasn't bad... He began asking me about town, is this or that still there and such, I had to refer to Julie about what was in town since she now knows the place better than I do now. He wanted to take us out for dinner, but I had already cooked on the grill so we ate on the porch, amongst the dogs... We laughed and talked of old times as night set in and lightning bugs began their dance.

When the hour signified the change of day he began to speak of his troubles. He has an ex wife who is giving him fits about his children and money. His business isn't doing well and he is facing layoffs. He had taken on friends and family in his company and they were now expecting financial miracles from him. He had become the self proclaimed king of bridge burning over the years and had no idea about what to do. His relationships with his kids are far from good. The only way they communicate is via twitter, texting or facebook. Everyone expects him to fund their lifestyles and he has allowed himself to become cynical about it all to the point of becoming an asshole. He was at a complete loss as to what to do about it all... I began to laugh at him.

He looked at me for a second and asked, "What's so funny about all this?"

"What's funny is that you already know what to do..."

He left shortly after that, taking his woodcarving with him and promising to keep in touch. A few days later I got an email from him. He thanked me for listening to him and then told me that he was jealous of me.. I laughed about that...

"You've been married for eighteen years to the same woman, get along with your kids, and enjoy what you're doing."

I thought about that... and it's true. When I was a kid we went out to eat at Bonanza on Bullsboro Drive every now and again, went to the movies, and went on the occasional vacation. We mostly stayed home or went over to someones house to cook out while our parents played cards. We didn't have cable or computers or cell phones. We didn't feel the need to "live in the road" as people do now. Except for the occasional sport or club meeting there weren't many extracurricular activities. Every now and again, these days, we will go to town to get an overpriced coffee or to eat breakfast on Saturday mornings, but mostly we stay here. Boring homebodies... As a family we hang out, talk, debate, watch movies, make jewelry and woodcarvings and exist on a live and let live type of philosophy. It took many years for the drama of other people to be weeded away from our lives, but those that are left are genuine. Over the years I have been called everything but a child of God, and during all this I have learned a few things... Most things that you deal with don't really matter. People who exist on drama, have completely new sets of friends every few years, and create strife just because they can are a dime a dozen. People like that are all the same, whether they are poor or wealthy. Sociopaths who tell themselves their own lies so much that they actually begin to believe them. People who manipulate others around them via money or lies are exactly the same. They only feel better about themselves when they control others and try to make them as miserable as they are. Life is far too short for that.. just far too short, that lesson took the death of my father to learn.

I look at people now who have done things to me in the past, and wonder if they realize that their lives are still full of drama and strife, even though all the people they blamed it on at the time are no longer involved with them. I marvel over people who insist on "finding themselves" and truly believe that they have been different people over the years. You're the same person, you just react differently to varied settings you find yourself in, it's all in what you're capable of handling.

In the situation my friend has found himself in he was dealing with people who put all of their stock in pictures. You can't just go get something you need, it has to be just right, whether it's a car, clothes, furniture or what have you. People who allow their possessions to control them in other words. Well, appearance would be more accurate.... the perfect picture, yet with no soul. These people can not create, they can only imitate or destroy.

I know I'm simple, boring, and predictable, but my life exists with no drama and I feel satisfied. So when you find yourself run ragged and feel exhausted because you just can't seem to get everything on your plate caught up, when you feel like life has thrown you out of the plane without a parachute, when you just simply can no longer deal with the bullshit.... come on by and enjoy a pitcher of tea on the porch. It doesn't cost anything and we might just solve all the worlds problems before the night is over...