GETTING TO KNOW YOU

Living out here is fulfilling, fulfillment being found in the sustained interaction we enjoy or perhaps endure. We respond to one another continually and, if not always consciously, we unavoidably consider ourselves in the context of the others with whom we share this island.  There exists a communal circuitry, a mutual involvement whether we like it or not, and some of us don’t, and even those who do like it, don’t now and then.  We all know much more about one another than an observer might think comfortable but because we all know these things, reciprocity is kind of a tempering agent.  We’re generally careful with one another’s secrets although a prudent exception can now and then be made.

Fred Hokanen recently went to a local restaurant with his wife for dinner.  The cook’s name was Louie. Fred ordered a big tenderloin, medium, three deep fried mac n cheese balls and creamed carrots and a draft beer.  His wife ordered poached flounder, sautéed vegetables, a garden salad and a glass of rose’.  The waitress brought the drinks and returned shortly with two orders of the fish & veggies.  Fred opened his mouth to call attention to the obvious mistake but the waitress held her hand out to quiet him and said, “Louie says, in the shape you’re in and given your recent spell, you need to be careful about what you eat and I agree.”  “That makes three of us” said his wife.  He wasn’t happy about it but he’s still alive.

We’re all players and nothing is as omnipresent as familiarity.  We find our strengths and our short-comings, our accomplishments and misdeeds, in a mercurial body of common knowledge.  By the time a kid has grown to adulthood that baggage and the knowledge that everyone knows every detail of that young life sometimes assumes enormous proportions.  Recently, one of the rapidly diminishing number of my elders stopped by while I was doing some charitable work to remind me that if what I was doing was community service, he didn’t think I was done. 

Rooftop Roberts had rather an extreme view of himself as a ladies man.  There was, after all, just so much of him to go around and so many lonely and unfulfilled women.  He sat at the bar watching nearly every Red Sox game and singing the virtues of the particular male enhancement product that sponsors so many of those games.  His fellow Sox fans, men and women, during one of Rooftop’s enthusiastic endorsements called his and everyone else’s attention to the disclaimer at the end of each ad that describes the product’s possible—and, in some cases, probable—side effects.  Among them, blindness was found more troubling than any of the others which include loss of memory, confusion, an irregular heartbeat, internal bleeding, an upset tummy and a  determined—but by now simply bothersome—appendage lasting more than three days.  They subsequently and memorably posted an alert around town cautioning that Rooftop may have over-indulged.  The warning advised that everyone steer clear of him cautioning that he was suffering from the aforementioned sustained condition, was having trouble staying upright (if not up), that his balance had been compromised, his spasms of arrhythmia were imparting an unmistakable urgency, he’d forgotten where he is or what he is supposed to do or with whom, and was blind but nonetheless aroused and eager at the prospect.