Communication Skills Came Easy For Me ... I Think

  • BY Mike Dewey
  • February 17, 2016
  • 401
                        
SUMMARY: It's the middle of February and everyone needs a break from reality: Enter Mike Dewey with his latest epistle. He's hopeful that you'll enjoy reading it as much as he had writing it. Last week, I blamed the Internet for everything that’s wrong with the world. This week, well, I’ve changed my mind. Deal with it, OK? “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay “Self-Reliance” in 1841. And even as I continue to wear the same jeans and T-shirts that I did in college and will always favor vinyl over whatever the latest rage in “music storage” might be, I’m not an immutable truth standing strong and firm against inevitable change. I mean, I was among the first to Skype … though that didn’t go well. As I recall, my wife and I were caught in the midst of some middling hurricane and were trying to communicate with loved ones who were worried about our safety. Then I walked into the frame, wearing faded swim trunks, long wet hair hanging over my eyes, flashing a kid-like smile, fresh from boogie-boarding the 15-foot swells, and all I could say was, “AWESOME!” No other words escaped my mouth. For 10 minutes. Not my best effort at communication in this new world of instant everything … but I meant every word. I felt badly about soaking the beachfront cottage’s carpet, but it wasn’t as if I could change clothes out on the balcony. Cat 4 hurricanes tend to chase a body indoors. Besides, I kind of enjoyed seeing family and friends on the computer screen, kind of like our own reality TV show, but my wife was the star. I was just guy who kept grinning and saying, “Awesome!” and popping the caps off cold ones. But the point is that we were in visual contact with folks in real time, hundreds – in some cases, thousands – of miles away and you have to tip your cap to that kind of miraculous technology. When I was growing up, my family shared what was known as a “party line” … and it nothing to do with inviting friends over to savor the newest Rolling Stones album. A party line was, simply put, something out of Mayberry, an old-fashioned arrangement agreed upon by all people concerned, one that said something like, “You won’t always be able to make calls when you want to … however, you can eavesdrop on your neighbors’ private conversations whenever you’re bored.” Or words to that effect. Of course, the flip side of that record was that they could do the same thing to you. I’m not saying I had a lot of, um, personal and intimate conversations with girls (or anyone else) at that time of my life. And I was a late bloomer: Didn’t even dance with a girl until that summer. I was 13. It was 1968 and all I cared about was music and mowing the lawn and movies and books and baseball and getting good grades … well, I did have a thing for TV, too, especially “Mission: Impossible.” And Ghoulardi. And, well, “Where the Action Is,” which featured Paul Revere and the Raiders, their amazing music and girls in bikinis dancing on the beach. Awesome. Anyway, what I lacked in social skills I more than made up for in utter cluelessness when it came to being a rather lazy kid who had no time to help his mother around the house because he was too busy with other stuff. Faithful readers already know what a rotten son I was, how I hardly ever made my bed, did the dinner dishes, swept the floor, took out the garbage, walked the dog or did anything for anyone other than myself. So that’s old news. But I did try to get better. Mostly, I worked hard on homework and made sure the grass looked better than any house’s in the neighborhood and, when it was needed, I could always write a thank-you letter to an aunt who’d remembered me at my birthday with a $25 check or an uncle who’d treated me to George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” three-record set as a Christmas gift. Yes, I was good at that. I could always string words together, could always connect with others, could write as if someone else was making magic. Communication skills came easily to me. My father once told me that I had a gift. Of course, he wrote it in a hastily scrawled note that he left in my mailbox when I was living on my own, a few years out of college, covering sports for my hometown newspaper, coaxing a relationship with a very fine lady into full bloom, living on punk rock and McEnroe’s volatile tennis. I still have that slip of paper, the one that somehow validated the possible and nullified the negative. So that’s what I’ve done ever since. I write. Facebook. Wow. I’ve been on it ever since I was, well, ordered by an employer to establish a site so as to deal with readers who wanted to get in touch. My wife and I were spending the Easter weekend on the beach when it became clear they were serious about me becoming a public person. “I have no interest in this hokum,” I said. “So you don’t want to keep writing for the people who look forward to your columns?” my wife asked. I felt like that kid who never made his bed, never did his chores. Luckily, we had a computer-savvy friend who was hanging out on the beach with us and together – he and my wife – they threw up a Facebook page for me, even as I walked the beach, studying swells and swooping seabirds, leaving the heavy lifting to them. And now, here we are all these years later, and I’m tending my Facebook page with the care Springsteen devoted to “Born to Run,” which took six months to get right. One song. Half a year. So I was writing about Bob Dylan and a high school friend and I connected over the Internet and he said the best concert he ever saw was Dylan, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, with the Grateful Dead. Summer 1981 … I saw that tour, so I posted that I experienced it in the Akron Rubber Bowl. Immediate response. “I was there, too … wild!” My smile was a mile wide … Imagine that, I thought, guys who had gone through high school together, being friends, and there we were in a throng of 25,000 on a hot July afternoon, digging the same scene. Sure, it took 35 years to share the experience, but that’s cool. We made that connection. And that’s all thanks to the Internet. Guess it all depends on your point of view. Mike Dewey can be emailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page.


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