You know me.
Well, you should if youve been reading my work since we opened this playhouse in the spring of 1990 and, now, all these years later, youre still interested in stopping by once a week to share some quality time.
Of course, like any habit, there are side effects, intended and accidental. For instance, any reference to any of the following is likely to trigger in you a visceral and immediate response one, maybe, linked to my work:
Rock and roll.
Notre Dame.
The Atlantic Ocean.
A transistor radio.
Steaks on the grill.
Then again, those are the good times weve shared, but let it never be said that we havent spent a lot of time cogitating on horrible things, stuff that changes you forever:
The death of someone close to you.
Lost love.
Jobs you hate.
Failing health.
The erosion of faith.
Most of the time, however, Ive tried to weave my way between the raindrops and offer an umbrella, a warm and safe place for us to, well, just hang out. I know that there are folks out there who are probably reading my work for the first time and to you, I say, Cant promise you anything, but Im glad you found this place.
One of the first questions people ask me is, How did you get to be so darn handsome and smart and perfect?
Well, actually, only one person ever put it that way and, eventually, she agreed to do me the honor of becoming my wife.
Yep.
I might have married later than most folks my age – my next birthday will be my 60th – but Ive always been the one lagging behind, whether its opening Christmas presents or deciding whether or not to major in philosophy or English or if its a good idea to jump into the sea on New Years Day, just because everyone else is.
What was it my brother said at our reception?
Oh, yeah.
Getting married for sex is like going to the movies for the popcorn.
No, our wedding on the beach was one time for all time and, just to hammer home the point, I got very, very lucky.
I wasnt much of a ladies man in grade school or junior high or high school or well, you get the idea.
Tall and skinny, I wasnt much of an athlete, though I was good enough at most sports, particularly baseball, not to embarrass myself too badly.
And I could shoot pool, throw darts, play poker and acquit myself in an adequate way at board games like Scrabble and and Jeopardy! and Trivial Pursuit, though my temper kind of got in the way when a partner or an opponent wasnt taking the contest seriously enough.
That is one of my most significant character flaws.
I suffer fools badly.
Over the decades, Ive tried – I really have – to ease off on judging others too harshly and, on the whole, I think Ive made progress.
But any mention of flaws in my makeup would also have to include a tendency toward extremes.
A child of excess, is what Mom used to call me.
And that was one of her nicer sobriquets.
Wretched Flea was another, as was the ever-popular Michael Dont.
Which is not to suggest that my mother wasnt on my side most of the time, though there were moments when not even the love of her first-born child could offset the shame of whatever mischief Id gotten myself into came to light.
You didnt really? shed ask, already dreading my all-too-honest reply.
And then wed talk it out and decide, eventually, that I was a gifted child with room for much improvement.
Then wed listen to an Indians game on the radio or discuss FDRs fireside chats or the brilliance of the Lords Prayer or Hamlet.
Maybe Nat King Cole.
Dad was another kind of parent altogether.
His was a rational, focused, organized and fantastic father, though I have a feeling he was winging it most of the time, at least when it came to me.
As the older brother of a younger sister and brother, I was the test case, the blank slate, the chalkboard without an eraser. Whatever mistakes were made – and, hey, I cant blame Mom and Dad for my flaws – were mitigated by repetition, so that by the time my sister had earned her masters and my brother had become our familys second Dr. Dewey, I was off the reservation, doing this for a living.
As I write this, Im aware of the fact that, had he survived a bad bout at the local hospital, my father would be celebrating his 98th birthday and, unlike Mom, I can actually picture him still among the living.
He was the epitome of moderation, a man who served his country at Bastogne and rode a glider into France on D-Plus Two Day, though he never, ever spoke of his war experiences. I didnt even know hed won a Bronze Star until his funeral mass, when our pastor mentioned it as casually as if hed said, And Stans green thumb was the envy of the neighborhood.
But guess what?
Dad actually wrote his own obituary years before he died.
This from a man whod sometimes forget his own birthday.
Whats all this? hed ask, bewildered by Moms pot roast on a weeknight and his favorite Boston cream pie cooling in the ice box, a cold one waiting.
But that was Dad.
He knew that we knew that he knew.
I think he liked our homemade cards the best.
My father studied life, which isnt to suggest that he didnt enjoy it, as well. As a Depression-era Hoosier, he wasnt easily taken in by new-fangled fads like color television; in fact, we never had one.
This, in the midst of the Sixties, was mind-blowing. Laugh-In and The Tonight Show and The Wonderful World of Disney, not to mention bloody footage from Vietnam and Chicago and Kent State all of that was shown in basic B&W, like Dorothys life before her house squashes the Wicked Witch of the East and she opens the door to Oz.
Dads reasoning was, well, Dads reasoning.
You can make anything any color you want, hed say, fiddling with the contrast and hues in a hotel room someplace in New England or Kentucky or Chicago, places we visited on vacations.
And that was that.
The irony is that I hardly ever watch TV anymore, finding it too unbelievably awful to have survived as long as it has.
Give me a transistor radio, a baseball game and a cooler in the driveway and I wont even complain when storms in the sky produce static.
Thats just me.
Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. If you like this column, visit his Facebook page, where youre always welcome.
