What Keeps Me Awake at Night

Been very worried since that dorky kid's recent 'Cry for Help' on these here Facebook 'walls.'

Can't help it. I care. Too much apparently. So sue me.

But the Kid's central query got me a-worryin' - Gad, I thought - ifn' he can't see and appreciate the beauty that's in a bowl of Lucky Charms (with or without a real-life Rainbow,) then how am I, of all people gonna help him!?

And when he asked me to join him "down at the river," what was I to think? Will he be going mop-al to the tune of an old Neil Young song? Or is he just getting into that 'Back to the Thames' stuff and trolling for possible Free Press story ideas? Or did he just want to pick my brains about the latest jest in the local newspaper by editor Paul Mxyzptlk Jr?

And that got me to reminiscing about my dinner with Wilbur - a man that I had literally been avoiding for years. ... One would occasionally hear that Wilbur had been following around at the heels of some Budhdish monk or else that someone had seen him at a party, and he'd been telling people that he'd talked to trees or something like that.

It was obvious that something terrible had happened to Wil, and the whole idea of meeting him made me nervous. I mean, I wasn't really up for that sort of thing. I had problems of my own - I couldn't help Wilbur - was I supposed to be a doctor or what?

Anyway, ten minutes after the salutations and into our conversation, Wilbur starts talking about conversing with trees and Buddhist monks who wear Gucci shoes - and then lays THIS on me -

WILBUR - "But anyway, we were all out in the country and went to Christmas Mass together. And it was, you know, one of those awful dreary Catholic churches on Long Island where the priest talks about Communism and birth control.

"And as I was sitting there in Mass, I was wondering. What in the world is going on? Here I am, a grown man and my job is going Nowhere and I don't know what to do.

"And all of a sudden a huge creature appeared, looking at the congregation, and it was about, I'd say, six-foot-eight, something like that, and it was half bull and half man, and it's skin was blue, and it had violets growing out of its eyelids and poppies growing out of its toenails.

"And it stood there for the whole Mass. I mean, there was nothing I could do that would make it disappear.

"You know, I thought, well, I'm just seeing this because I'm bored. You know, close my eyes and open them again - but I could not make that creature go away!

"Now, I didn't talk about this with other people, because they'd think I was weird. But I felt that this creature had come to me to somehow comfort me.

"In other words, somehow he was appearing to say, 'Well, you may feel low and you may not be able to write right now. But look what can come to you on Christmas Eve! Hang on, old friend. I may seem weird to you, but on these weird voyages, you know, weird creatures show up. It's part of the journey. You're okay. Hang in there."

...

...

... and the thing is, that a few Christmases ago, the same thing happened to me. Not in church but at one of those similar obligatory Spritual times of the year. Yes, I am referring to the Extended Family Christmas Dinner.

At some point in 'My Dinner With Andre,' even Wally feels the urge to tell Andre that he's full of crap. And I did too. Until that one Christmas when I saw my own Blue Creature instill in me an unstoppable giggling fit at the dinner table during one of those Extended-Family Christmas Get-togethers and Car Swaps.

No stopping it either. Once the giggling starts, there's no stopping it. Jack Burkhardt could have walked in and started reading the nightly news and I would have thought that to be the height of hilarity.

Some blamed it on the variance of the wines.

But I know better.

On that night, I was Touched by the Hand of God.

He works in mysterious ways, you know.

I still don't know just what He wanted to tell me. Who killed J.F.K.? How to buy real estate for no money down? The Meaning of It All? Or maybe He just realized that I was in dire need of a good chuckle.

Next time, I hope I have the presence of mind to touch Him back. And to personally give Thanks for the fact that when that long-ago giggling fit did happen, at least it was after I'd carved the meat. And had the presence of mind to give the drumsticks to my brutha's-in-law.

Afterwards, when my all my kin had headed back down the 401, Butch came over and shared some of the peyote buttons that Bettie had placed on his Christmas present of toss cushions.

Personally, I would have preferred to just stay at home and have my girlfriend Mavis cook me up a nice delicious Indian dinner. But for the past few decades, our financial circumstances have forced her to work five nights a week in Retail (see: Coopersretailblog.blogspot.com) Those plastic-coated paper clips don't come cheap, you know. Or envelopes for that matter. Yes, the life of a writer is hard.

And yet, for some odd reason, every time it's the second last weekend of June, I'll think of Wilbur. And sometime, some Sunday mornin,' maybe 'bout goin' to Service.