What a fatigue of a year.
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It Began With A Clean Slate
In January of 2016 I wrote a Bedtime Story titled Come Gentle, 2016. The first sentence, “2016 is just an infant of a year.” I wrote, “I want to get along with 2016. It’s a year, but it’s also a place in time, and I want to be a good citizen. I want to be a good neighbor with everyone else who is sharing 2016.”
Oh, I can platitude with the best of them. And I mean well, bless my heart, I do. But this year here…my goodness, it was a porcupine in a balloon room.
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And Then People Started Dying
“More smiles, more hugs, more how-ya-doin’s. More sincerity.” That was me in January, all first date infatuated, and yet to see her without makeup.
2016 was still in diapers when the big names started dropping. David Bowie, Merle Haggard, Prince, Glenn Frey, Muhammad Ali. We lost some bigger than life personalities, which only made our own lives seem smaller, and getting shorter.
We lost people from our way-back, like Patty Duke, Garry Shandling, Elie Wiesel. We lost Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Nancy Reagan. Arnold Palmer, Gordie Howe, Buddy Ryan. Gene Wilder from Young Frankenstein, Alan “Wilbur” Young from Mr. Ed, and we lost the mother from Everybody Loves Raymond. Mother Angelica, Joey Feek, and Pat Conroy. Harper Lee of To Kill A Mockingbird, and the name I used to giggle at when I heard it on the news, former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
We lost Abe Vigoda from The Godfather, “Tell Mike it was only business,” lost U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and we lost Nat King Cole’s daughter, Natalie.
And then there’s this paragraph, for all of you who lost friends and family this year. Our lives are filled with the non-famous. They don’t make the national list, and yet when we think of their best traits, we know of no equal, and think, At least I know it can be…
I alluded to death, in that January story, “Grandparents gone, parents gone, now, when so many better-than-me’s are no more, I wish to act with what I know, that life really does go on without us, and no one should meet the gift of a day without being clothed in modesty, humility and gratefulness.” Fine garment of words to sport around in the first week of January, but patches, tears, missing buttons and ring around the collar towards year end…
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And Then Came The Election From Hell
I have spared you my opinions on politics for multiple reasons; the first being that I am unqualified. There was some cowardice too, wrapped up in the rationalization of who-am-I and what-good-would-it-do.
Speaking as one layman citizen, I would summarize my view from the couch potato throne as going something like this: never saw Trump coming; didn’t take him serious; surely this is just a novelty; well lookee here; I can’t believe he just said that; I can’t believe he’s still saying that; I can’t believe these are our two choices; I can’t believe he made it worse; I can’t believe that (fill in the blank) doesn’t see it like I see it; O that’s the end of that; nope…still afloat…he’s not a quitter, and on election night, not-the-blowout-I-expected, oooh look who just took Florida…
I thought both candidates were flawed. That one is now President Elect does not erase my reservations. Part of the irony of all this Make America Great thing was that it made me compare these candidates not to Abe Lincoln but to regular Americans that I’ve known. Didn’t we all grow up with quality all about us? Men with clean mouths, rigid codes of honor, behavior to be admired, and modeled after? My childhood school principal, Mr. Stephens, came to mind. He, who wore a suit ‘n tie and wingtips to high school football games. It’s the men who lived down the street from us, who’d paid WWII and Korea dues in their youth, then came home and kept giving America more than they were taking from it.
The Make America Great slogan made me re-appreciate my grandfather, uncle and my father, who lived long, honorable lives, and left behind no mud to be slung.
Early on, before the political conventions, I just kept chewing on the fact that locally, we have a mayor so proven and popular that he can run unopposed, and now that he’s retiring we have a choice between multiple good options, but at the national level it seemed like a hold-your-nose-and-vote situation.
“Less drama. Tension is a thousand dollar bill, being used to light a fireplace in August.” I actually wrote those very words in January, not knowing how bigly the fire, from all the thousand dollar bills of tension this campaign would cause.
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At Least We Get A Lull
In an election with such polarizing candidates, especially in the media and social media climate of today, it’s never over when it’s over. But at least we have a decision, and some time to make our peace with it. The worst part of 2016 is hopefully behind us.
As someone who tends to go the lone wolf route, I am wary of The Herd, but still have a certain faith in The Herd, knowing that though strangers, they all want the same basic things: safety, freedom, prosperity, and a better tomorrow for their heirs. On election night I turned off the TV with a calm resignation, that the people had spoken, and they voted like they were fixing something that was broken.
Whether we voted right or wrong, there’s no point in proclamation until history has its say, but we deserve credit for sincerity and good intentions. We all attended the wedding, and whether we favor the marriage or not, it’s always bad manners to voice an opinion after they’re thrown the rice.
The election reminded me of something one of my father’s old Baptist friends told me. On the search committee to select a new preacher for the church, and having done this for decades, he had it boiled down to this, you either get a preacher or you get a pastor, and whatever you had last, the congregation wants the other.
Donald Trump is definitely the other.
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This edition of Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories is brought to you by Eighty-one, where like most of you, whatever 2016 was, we’re ready for the other there too.
Uncle P’s Bedtime Stories can be found on Eighty-one’s Facebook page. He can be reached at 81creativity@gmail.com.
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