HOME
Message Board
CURRENT COLUMNS
- Editor's Corner
- Blogfest 2005
- Commentary
- Commentary Too
- Down The Middle
- Faulking Around
- Global Warning
- This guy walks into a bar...
- Investing 101
- Faulking Opinions
- Off The Rail
- Words
ARCHIVES
LINKS
CONTACT US
 | |||
This guy walks into a bar and says... - Nov 30, 2006 - Printable Version
- I learn, in spite of my inner Daveness
by Ken Shade
Main Entry: Dave·ness Function: noun
Pronunciation: 'dAv-nes
1: a state of being characterized by crude, tragicomic, but sometimes endearing, oafishness, 2: crude, tragicomic, but sometimes endearing, oafish behavior, 3: actions and personality similar to those of Dave.
This word does not appear in your dictionary, but I am sure it someday will. When I enter "Daveness" into my dictionary, it tells me that no entries were found, and suggests that I may have been looking for a number of other words. Among the suggested words are "deafness," "dueness," "tavernas," "darkness," "direness," "dearness" and daftness." All of these words have been used at times to describe Dave, and recount acts of Daveness but, even in the aggregate, they do not come close to explaining what Daveness is.
No, "Daveness" is like "Beatlesque," which is in my dictionary. "Beatlesque" (bi:tel'esk) is defined as "a term used to describe rock bands, pop bands and other musicians who make music similar to that of The Beatles." Reading that tells you what the word means, but unless you know what the Beatles sounded like, you could never really use it properly. If you've never known Dave, you can't use the word "Daveness."
The word "Daveness" was coined by my friend, John, as shorthand to be used in lieu of a full description of whatever Dave had recently done.
"What happened to your garden?"
"Ah, just some Daveness."
This translates among my friends as: "What Dave did in, and to, my garden was insane, infuriating and funny, but my nerves are too shot to go into it right now. I'll tell you later, after I've had a couple of beers, unless Dave drank all the beer."
I don't drink beer, so the only way for me to calm down after some extreme Daveness would be to leave, even if we were in my house.
Dave is a guy I met when I was in the fifth grade. He has been drifting in and out of my life ever since. This is not unusual. Dave drifts in and out of everybody's lives. Hell, Dave drifts in and out of his own life! He never seems connected to anything, any place or any person.
Wherever he drifts, he leaves trails and tales of Daveness. Among those of us who know Dave, retelling these stories provides hours of entertainment, and is a lot more fun than experiencing them was in the first place. Some notable acts of Daveness include:
showing up at the home of our mutual friends unannounced and remaining for weeks at a time; not bathing for the duration of his stay; almost pathological use of what Garry Trudeau calls the "obscene gerund;" drinking all the beer in others' homes, complaining about the brand they chose and offering to go get something better...in their car...with their money; loudly relating the lurid details of a sexual conquest...boyish gleam in his eye...in the presence of his mother; stealing his older sister's diary and reading it aloud to his entire speech class; allowing a thick carpet of what appears to be moss to grow on his teeth and yet still, somehow, managing to debauch the girl you considered a pristine and unapproachable angel in high school. He does everything offensive, but seldom completely offends because there is always perverse charm and innocence to his depravity.
Dave used to walk to school with Johnny, who lived across the street from him. They'd eat breakfast together, then come to school.
On one particular morning, Dave showed up with very short hair. We all wore our hair quite long in those days, and called ourselves "freaks." A freak only showed up at school with short hair if they had gotten into trouble. Dave had been unable to get his "failing slips" out of the mailbox before his mother came home, so she made him cut off all of his hair. Dave was not a devotee of personal cleanliness. His hair had been dirty, rope-like and hard to tame. Still, it had been long, so it served as his passport.
As I sat behind Dave in one class, I noticed that his neck, which had been covered by his hair, was very white, while his face and throat were grey. I wondered: "Did the hair shield his skin from the sun, and he has an odd-colored tan, or did his hair shield his neck from the dirt which has accumulated elsewhere?" I discovered that the latter was the case by applying a small amount of a mildly acidic solution to the grey area to see if the color would smear or run. (I spit on his neck.)
Moments later, after Dave quit swearing, the guy next to me, Dale Graham, leaned over and whispered: "Look! There's a raisin behind Dave's ear!"
I looked. There was, indeed, a large raisin wedged between the back of his ear and his right mastoid area. Having just determined that it must have been a very long time since Dave had properly bathed, we had the immediate and obvious exchange:
Dale: I wonder how long it's been there?
Me: Probably since it was a grape!
This amused both Dale and me, but it amused me much more than it amused Dale. I laughed so hard and so long that I passed out and had to be taken from class by Mr. Anderson, the principal. By the end of the day, word around the halls was that I had OD'd, which enhanced my freak reputation exponentially.
I later learned that the raisin was there because Johnny and Dave had engaged in a raisin toast war before school that morning.
As I said, you have to know Dave to know Daveness, and why so many are at peace with the idea he will never be fully part of, or out of, our lives.
There was a whole lotta Daveness goin' on at the Oklahoma State Fair in 1972. I know because I was there. I went to the fair with Dave. The word had not yet evolved, but Daveness was happening nonetheless.
The Daveness at the fair was not all Dave's. Dave and I were twelve-year-olds, so much of the Daveness was mine. These days, I try to keep my Daveness to a minimum but, when you're twelve, Daveness is like a cracking voice or a zit on your lip: You're not aware of it until your humiliation is utter.
My father had dropped us off at the fair at about noon, with money and instructions for us to meet him at the front gate at 11:00 PM. I don't recall exactly how much money he gave us. I am sure it was the amount most fathers would consider adequate for two boys loose at the fair for eleven hours, which is to say that it was inadequate. We ate garbage food, played the dragline, rode every poorly inspected ride, ate more garbage food and tried to pass for eighteen so we could see the burlesque show. After paying and taking our seats, we were asked to leave by the manager, who did not return our admission price. We asked for it, but only got a jocular "Go fuck yourselves, boys," from the manager/barker whose number of fingers (nine) exceeded his number of teeth. We didn't look any older when they allowed us to buy the tickets than we did when they kicked us out, but I'm sure they figured we'd be too afraid of getting into trouble to complain to anybody.
They were right.
Motivated more by the desire to see naked women than a sense of fairness, we went around behind the burlesque tent and peered between the flaps, only to discover that the statuesque goddesses painted on the signs out front bore no resemblance to the hoary skin sacs to be found inside. They didn't even take off their clothes! They just lurched around in apparent intoxication, wearing harem pants and beaded bras. Their images remain in my mind to this day, inspiring me to support laws demanding that any woman so un-erotic that she can't inspire tumescence in a boy about to turn thirteen must be incarcerated in a very dark prison for a very long time. We left long before it was over.
We ate and played and rode until we had so little cash we couldn't find anything else cheap enough to do, which happened at about 3:30.
The Daveness commenced.
WKY was broadcasting live from the fair. WKY was the more popular of the two top-forty stations in the area. Any time you were listening to it, you could be sure that most of your friends were hearing the same song at the same time. As you can imagine, then, the WKY truck was an exciting place for the 'tweens and teens at the fair, especially when they had no money. They'd all stand around outside the converted Winnebago and watch the DJ's work through the windshield. Dave and I arrived in hope of meeting one of the DJ's....one DJ, in particular. Danny Williams, Fred Hendrickson or Dale Wehba would have been cool to see, but Ronnie Kaye was the guy we all considered the star. Ronnie Kaye was younger, had long hair and drove a Rolls-Royce. He also hosted "The Scene," which was Oklahoma City's version of "American Bandstand." "The Scene" was syndicated in a few other markets, but it originated at WKY-TV, a fact in which we took immense pride.
There was no Rolls outside the Winnebago when we arrived, so we knew Ronnie Kaye was not there. In fact, we didn't know who the guy on the air was. This was a "fair day," a day on which all the local schools were closed so the kids could attend the state fair. Since we were usually at school during the day, the hosts who did these shifts were as alien to us as Russian poets, which was quite a letdown. We were excited, though, to see a couple of girls walking around with handfuls of 45's. We asked where they got them, and they said that WKY was handing them out.
I want to make sure, at this point, that any young people who may be reading this understand that WKY was not arming preteens with large handguns. 45's were 7" vinyl records with one song on each side. They were called "45's" because they ran at 45 RPM on your record player. They were also known as "singles." Radio stations received scores of them from record companies each month, and few of them were ever played on the air. Most of them just took up space. WKY had cleared their shelves of hundreds of them to pass around to kids and create goodwill.
We knocked on the door of the RV, and asked whoever that was that answered the door if they still had any records for us. The guy handed us at least fifty of them. We were thrilled until we sat down and took a look at them. None of them were by artists we had ever heard of. Most of them were on labels we didn't even recognize. We were hoping for Billy Preston, Bill Withers, Three Dog Night, The Hollies and The Temptations. What we got were Nina Bjarnarson, The Lagoons, John Scariano, The Narcissists and The Jerks (Featuring Frank Hartung). We sifted through them, picked out four or five with interesting titles, and decided to have fun with the rest.
There were no races at the track, that day, so we decided that it would be fun to see how far a record would fly when thrown from the top of the grandstand. There was a metal ladder affixed to the back of the press box that took us up to the very roof of the announcer's booth. We were not throwing 45's from the top row of seating. We were at least thirty feet above that, sailing the dreams of unknown recording artists into the cool October afternoon. When they recorded them, each of these people must have wondered: "Just how far will my song go?" The answer was: "About two hundred feet, before they shatter on the front straight-away."
I guess it was because we were throwing them into the empty track area, instead of into the crowds on the outside, but nobody stopped us. We launched singles until we only had the few we intended to listen to, then climbed down. It's always exciting, when you're that age, to do something bad you expect to get caught at, and get away scot free. (Come to think of it, Scott Free was a "star" whose record we tossed. The song was called "Misplaced Hope." The "B" side was "Kill Those Little Bastards.")
On the way out, we ran into Mitchell Kring. Mitchell was the only kid in seventh grade who was considered to be more uncool than Dave. Mitchell drooled, was a Jehovah's Witness in Baptist-land, seemed to be emotionally about six years old and was a jr. high Mr. Malaprop. His hair was piled high and oily. He wore plaid pants, Buddy Holly glasses, white socks and black orthopedic shoes every day. Any one of these attributes would have placed him outside the hip, jet set culture we all thought we were living in. Together, they made him a monstre de nature to whom we all enjoyed feeling superior. When we saw Mitchell, he was carrying an enormous teddy bear. He was not carrying it in a manner that indicated he had won it for a girl at ring toss. He was carrying it like somebody had won it for him, and he loved it. Mitchell was with his family, but he wanted to hang out with us. This would not do, so we cruelly ditched Mitchell by wresting his teddy bear away from him, throwing it into a bathroom, and making tracks when he went in to get it.
I had to cruelly ditch Mitchell again six years later, but that is another story.
Ditching Mitchell made us hungry, but we had nowhere near enough money to buy any more food. So, we came up with a plan.
Every year at the fair, outside the Made In Oklahoma Building, there was the same stand that sold salt water taffy. I had never eaten taffy, but I had been checking out the stand since I was very small because it had a fascinating display. Several wooden rods had been covered with clay in the shapes and colors of ocean waves. The rods were placed in a row as part of a "beach and lighthouse" scene, visible from the side. They turned slowly and created a pretty impressive illusion of a rolling sea. I used to stand and watch it as long as my parents would allow me to. In front of the beach scene, every year, stood four display boxes of the taffy being sold.
We walked to the taffy stand and watched the display for a few minutes. I inched closer to the sample boxes and tapped one to make sure they had not been placing empty boxes on the counter all these years. I could tell there was something in the box, so I looked around. Nobody young enough to catch me was standing nearby, so I snatched the closest taffy box, yelled "Run!" to Dave, and took off, not stopping until I got to the base of the Atlas rocket on permanent exhibition outside the science building.
Have you ever tasted taffy that has been sitting in a box on a display counter for at least twelve years? Have you ever tried to bite into taffy that has been sitting in a box on a display counter for at least twelve years? I do not recommend either experience. We remained hungry because we were unable to down a single piece. We could get our teeth about a quarter of an inch into it. After that, we could not move our jaws in either direction. We could not chew the taffy, and we could not spit it out. My jaw stayed welded in that taffy until 1975, when Bill Walker freed me by punching me in the mouth. Dave's problem lasted until his basic training in the army.
We wandered around the fairgrounds, looking at things...especially the bizarre entertainments on the midway. We didn't have enough money to go into any of them, but we watched every time one or two of the "acts" were brought out free as an inducement for people to pay to see the rest. There was The Alligator-skinned Woman (a lady in a bikini with a terrible case of psoriasis), Popeye, the man who could make his eyeballs shoot out of his face (he had nothing on Bernie Mac), The Human-headed Snake (a woman with her head protruding through a hole in a table and a stuffed snake skin coiled around her neck), the cow with two faces (three nostrils and three eyes, really) and The Penguin Man (probably a Thalidamyde case).
We leered at girls we'd never have the guts to talk to, smoked cigarettes and watched a lot of people lose a lot of money trying to knock concrete milk bottles over with softballs. We looked at everything we could find. We were actually bored enough to go look at the prize-winning calves, pigs and jars of jelly.
We were on our way to ride the mono-tonous-rail when we heard a loud voice repeating something over and over with great excitement. Drums played feverishly behind the words. Each recitation was identical in tone and inflection, so we knew it must be on tape. We followed the voice and, as we drew nearer the source, we began to make out the words:
LITTLE PEOPLE!
LITTLE PEOPLE!
PEOPLE THAT CAN STAND IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND!
PEOPLE THAT CAN STAND IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND!
THEY WALK!
THEY TALK!
THEY'RE ALIVE AS YOU AND ME!
SEE THE LITTLE PEOPLE!
YOU WON'T BELIEVE YOUR EYES!
THEY MUST BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED!
LITTLE PEOPLE!
LITTLE PEOPLE!
PEOPLE THAT CAN STAND IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND!
PEOPLE THAT CAN STAND IN THE PALM OF YOUR HAND!
The small, decrepit tent the sound was coming from was far away from the rest of the edifying midway attractions. There were no external lights on it, save one swag lamp attached to a wooden silhouette of a person with what looked like a "Ken" doll standing on his hand. A dull, yellow glow emanated from inside the tent. There was nobody outside to take tickets or money, but there barely visible sign attached to the tent flap that said: "ADMISSION: FREE!"
This was the kind of distraction we could afford, and we hoped it might be a little warmer in the tent, so we went inside. Against one side of the tent was a stage area, covered with hay. The stage was decorated with tribal statues, dolls, drums, skins and masks. Looking back on it now, I realize that these were cheap souvenirs representing a wide variety of times and countries. The intent was to create a feel of adventure and mystery, and it was effective on Dave and me. If I walked into that same tent today, I'd think I was in a failing Pier 1 Imports store.
The reason the light from the tent had appeared dull and yellow from the outside was that everything inside was illuminated with 40 watt yellow "bug lights," like my grandmother had outside her front door.
Amidst the piles of hay on the stage were two enormous, comedy-skit pair of boxing gloves, a set of bongos and a portable PA system. There was a coffee can near the PA with a slot cut in the lid. The can was labeled "TIPS AND DONATIONS" in magic marker.
Six of us had assembled to watch the show when the "LITTLE PEOPLE!" entered from behind a big, cheap pseudo-Persian rug that hung across the back of the stage.
There was a small but audible "I've been had" groan from the audience. These people were little, but they'd never be able to stand in anybody's hand. They're called "little people" today. In 1972, they were called midgets. None of them were less and about 42" tall. There were four of them: two women, and two men who were apparently twins. They were dressed in layers of sweaters, jackets and wool clothes. It was getting pretty cold, and it seemed clear that these people had no heater in there.
Given all the hay, that may not have been entirely bad.
All of the "LITTLE PEOPLE!" were of African descent. The older of the two women was especially dark skinned. She was about fifty, I guess. She began speaking through the PA in one of those elegant island accents that I now love to listen to, but was then hearing for the first time. It took some effort to understand what she was saying because she spoke softly, with no enthusiasm, and because that obnoxious recording was still blaring outside.
"My name is Rose," she recited for probably the hundredth time that day. "We are the little people. My friend is now going to do a voodoo dance."
Rose started mumbling a tune. From time to time, the word "voodoo" was discernible, but the rest of it may not have been words at all. As she sang, the other woman stood up from her pile of hay and shuffled around. She moved the hay around with her feet in the manner of a farmer who had dropped his pick-up keys, and wanted to spot them before he went to the trouble of bending over. The entire "voodoo dance" lasted about twenty-five seconds before Rose continued:
"That was the voodoo dance. My other friend is now going to play the drums for all of you."
One of the men picked up the bongos, placed them in the wrong position between his thighs, and started banging on them with no rhythm or pattern. He did this for about ten seconds with an extremely bored look on his face, then dropped the bongos and sat down.
Now Rose moved on the "meat and potatoes" section of the show by announcing: "That was the drumming. As you can see, my friends and I work very hard to entertain you. We do not receive any money for our work, other than what you give."
During this time, the man who had not played the drums picked up the coffee can and walked from person to person, holding it up for them to place donations in.
Nobody did.
I didn't because I was so surprised. Dave and I were the first two, among the six in attendance, to have the coffee can shoved toward them, so we were not able to collect our thoughts before the man moved on. He seemed to be so used to receiving nothing that he didn't even bother to wait for people to start feel guilty and get out their wallets. He just raced through, placed the can on a box near the "exit" flap, and sat on his hay again.
Rose didn't wait before she got the show rolling again, either. These people were zipping through their set like a lounge comic who bombs every night, but gets paid anyway.
"Now there will be boxing."
The two men pulled on the big boxing gloves and apathetically acted out Rose's blow-by-blow account: "The bell rings for the first round. The fighters move to each other and one is down. He is up again but he is down again. He gets up but he is knocked down again. The three knock-down rule is in effect so the fight is over and we have a winner."
This whole "rumble in the jungle" took about fifteen seconds, and the show was over.
I know it was over because Rose said so: "The show is over. Thank you very much. Please remember to make your donations on your way out. Thank you again, and come back with your friends. There will be another show in fifteen minutes."
They all shuffled, you have to shuffle in hay, off behind the rug and probably tried to get warm.
Throughout the performance, nobody had made the slightest sounds of approval or disapproval, but now two other members of the audience started complaining loudly. "That was pathetic!" one said, with visible breath. "I didn't even pay, and I feel ripped off!"
"We'll never get that three minutes of our lives back," his friend joined in, and we all laughed.
I laughed because it seemed clever, but I felt bad about laughing as soon as I had done it. The "LITTLE PEOPLE!" were right behind that rug, about nine feet away. I am sure they could tell from the direction of the sound that Dave and I had been among those who laughed. I thought they must be sad, and I didn't want to be part of the group that made them feel even worse.
I looked at Dave and told him I wanted to stay to see the show again. He agreed.
I don't know why he agreed, but I remember the look on his face, and I think now that he was feeling the same way I was. Twelve-year-olds, even the authors of Daveness, are not incapable of sympathy. We were going to see that show again, and we were not going to allow them to get away without knowing that we appreciated them. If we just stuffed our money in the coffee can on the way out, they'd never know who'd put it there.
So, we stood there, turning blue in the yellow, and waited. We only had to wait a short while, but when you are cold and hungry, a minute can seem like an hour. But then again, where would we go? We had too little money for food and it was October everywhere.
When the "LITTLE PEOPLE!" returned, there were only five of us in the tent. Dave and I started applauding like they were The Rolling Stones, but the silence of the others there drowned us out, and we stopped clapping a little too abruptly.
The show was exactly the same as before, with the exceptions of our frequent polite applause and the contribution of every penny we had to the coffee can. We stood where we had the first time, two feet from Rose, so it was easy for her to start talking to us during our clapping at the end. A guy in the audience was on his way out bellowing: "Sheeee-it! ("Shit" has two syllables in Oklahoma.) We coulda been some place warm!" Rose ignored him and started a conversation with these two boys who had suddenly exhibited some appreciation for her efforts. I'm sure she knew it was pity, but she was willing to grasp it. Maybe pity was the only positive feedback she ever got. Maybe this was the first time they had even received pity. I don't know, but whatever the situation, she saw somebody reaching out to her, and she reached back. She took note of the fact that we were still carrying a few records, and she asked us where we got them. Dave told her, and handed them to her so she could inspect them.
"I don't think I know any of these."
"We don't either, but we're going to listen to them."
We asked her if she and her companions had made any of the artifacts in the tent.
"No, our boss bought all those someplace. He travels a lot, and he's always bringing something back to put in here."
I was a little disappointed to find out that they were not pygmies from Africa, but also suddenly interested in whatever story she might have to tell. If she was not from some pygmy tribe, then I had to take her out of the mental box I had put her in and find out who she really was.
I started hitting her with questions, and Dave joined in. Suddenly, this was not pity. It was a person about whom we could make no assumptions, and we were interested.
We learned that she was from Barbados, but that the twins were from New Jersey and the other woman was from Colorado. This was why the boss had her do all the talking.
We learned that she had been married, but was now divorced. Her son was grown. She worked in this show because the boss had hired her two years before. He was in the business of traveling around and hiring black little people to come work for him and become "LITTLE PEOPLE!" The cast was in constant flux, and Rose had now been in it longer than any of her co-performers.
She seemed so happy to have somebody new to talk to, and she didn't condescend to us because we were kids. All three of us were truly enjoying the interplay and discoveries of race, age and culture.
When we asked her what kind of music she liked, she got a little serious on us. There was a song, she said, that she really liked. She didn't know who it was by, but if she could find out, she buy the record. She didn't say this in an offhand way. It seemed important for her to have this song. She asked us if we knew who it was by, and what it was called. She didn't. She didn't know all of the words, either, but she remembered that it said "You can't please everybody."
I told her she was probably talking about "Garden Party," by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band. The song was currently in the top ten, so I'd heard it a thousand times. I sang the chorus to her to see if I was right:
"Well, it's
All right now
I've learned my lesson well
You can't please everyone
So you got to please yourself"
Her face lit up and she told me that was the one. She reached out and took the records from Dave's hand again so she could see if "Garden Party" was among them. It wasn't, of course, but she thanked us for telling her and seemed buoyed by the knowledge that she would soon be able to buy the song.
It was time for the next show to start, so she began her patter. Dave and I whispered an idea to each other. We left the show quickly and quietly, headed for the WKY van. My mother had worked at WKY, so I thought I might get a special favor if I dropped her name.
When we got to the WKY remote broadcast RV, The guy in the air was probably Fred Hendrickson. I think he usually did that shift. I don't know who he was. I was too cold to bother asking. Dave knocked on the door, and I did the talking when it opened:
"Are you still giving away records?"
"Yeah...sure," he said, plunging his hand into a cardboard box, still brimming with vinyl, just inside the door.
"No," I said. "I just want a copy of 'Garden Party.' Do you have an extra one?"
Probablyfred said: "We use that one, and I can't go digging around looking for one particular thing just for you."
A quick change of subject was in order.
"Do you know my mother?"
"I don't know. I know a lot of mothers. Which one is yours?"
"Shanna Shade...She used to work at the station. Lee Allen Smith was her boss."
"Lee Allen Smith is everybody's boss....Yeah, I know her....Hang on a minute."
He went back into the "station" and closed the door behind him. He was probably doing a break. When he returned, he held out a nice, new virgin copy of "Garden Party."
"I found an extra," he said, then added: "Your mom's good-looking."
I didn't say anything except "Thank you." Having people tell me how pretty my mother was always made me uncomfortable.
We ran back to the "LITTLE PEOPLE!" tent because we were happy to bringing a nice surprise to our new friend. When we got there, another epic production was in progress. The boxing was ending, and some drunk red necks were making fun: "Man, that was a real ass whoopin'! That little fucker's a regular Joe Frazier! I'm scared, man!" The assembled multitude, now numbering about nine, laughed.
We went in the exit because it was closer, and caught Rose before she disappeared behind the rug.
"We brought you something," said Dave, holding out the 45.
She walked over, gently took it from Dave's hand and sat down on her hay pile. She smiled, and gently ran her fingers over the printing on the label, as though she were reading Braille.
We felt very satisfied with ourselves for making her happy and, being kids, we wanted loads of praise from her for what we had done. We started telling her the interesting story of how we had put ourselves out for her benefit. Our tale was so full of excitement and self-congratulation that were weren't really paying very much attention to the silent woman with our new gift in her hand. So, I was surprised when I looked down and saw that, even though she was smiling, there was a tear running down her face. I recognized it as that "happy tears" thing that I had done only once in my life, thus far, but that adults seemed to all the time. If Dave saw the tear, he said nothing about it, but suddenly neither of us were talking. The only sounds were the bombastic pleadings outside to come see the "LITTLE PEOPLE!" and the sound of Rose, softly repeating as she stared at the Decca label: "You can't please everybody. You can't please everybody. You can't..."
I felt like an intruder on her private moment, so I told her it was time for us to go meet my father. (It really was.) She told us "Good-bye." We told her "Good luck," and walked to the exit. The last thing we saw as we left was that she was again staring at that record. Her lips were moving. She was alone on her little haystack.
It was a long walk back to the front gate of the fairgrounds, and we glad to see my father there waiting in a warm, running car.
I thought about Rose from time to time during my teen years and, after a while, finally began to understand why she needed that song so much.
Now, as an adult, I think about her even more. I think about her when I fail. I think about her when I know I am about to fail. I think about her when I see little point in continuing... anything. I think about her when nobody seems to notice what I really am, want or need. I revisit her memory when my Daveness has made a fool of me. I think about her when I succeed, or when I am tempted to compromise myself, instead of an issue.
Rose is part of me, wherever she is and whenever I think of her.
Each time, I picture there with her lips moving and a slight smile. Each time, I sing along:
"Well, it's
All right now
I've learned my lesson well
You can't please everyone
So you got to please yourself"
Voice your opinion on our message board (you don't have to sign up to post).