About a week ago I found out that I had bladder cancer. It was caught early and doesn't give any indication of being life threatening. Nevertheless, it made me realize more than ever that tomorrow is not promised. So I decided to start a blog. I have no idea what I will want to talk about. I suspect some of what I write will be about memories. Some will be my political point of view. A lot of it will just be about feelings. I hope I don't bore you.
Yesterday while I was driving to work, I was thinking of two incredibly funny incidents that happened to me when I was younger and working different jobs. When I was 18 I spent my summers as a substitute delivery man for a diaper service my father ran. I would run the routes of the regular delivery drivers while they were on vacation. One day I went to deliver diapers to a house in Yonkers, NY. The door was open and only a screen door was closed. Through the screen I could hear Smokey Robinson crooning "Ooh baby, baby". A black woman was inside, holding her broom as a dancing partner and was swaying back and forth to the music. I pounded on the door...she ignored me. I yelled...she ignored me. Finally, once the song ended, she came to the door and said, "I'm sorry, honey, nobody, and I mean NOBODY, interrupts me when I'm listening to Smokey. That's when I decided as a rule that black people were cooler than white people.
The other story I remembered was when Kathie and I owned a bartending school. We had a student who had been a repo man and he wanted to move up to bartender in a biker bar. He was a very nice guy. Anyway, after he graduated he stopped by the school and asked me to stop by the biker bar so he could make me a drink. One Friday night I decided to take him up on it. After school let out that night I drove over to Council Bluffs (we lived in Omaha) about 10 p.m. As teacher, I always wore a frilly tuxedo shirt with black satin striped pants. Not exactly the type of apparel often seen at biker bars. I pulled up to the bar and outside were some of the most ferocious people I had ever seen...chains hanging, tattoos, body piercings, etc. And those were the women. I thought "I am going to die tonight". I snuck in as discreetly as one can when wearing a tuxedo into a biker bar and sat in a corner. My ex-student recognized me and smiled. All of a sudden this behemoth of a guy comes walking over to me. I thought I was in big trouble. He looked at me and said, " Did you teach that boy to bartend?" "Yes", I meekly replied. "Let me tell you something," he said. "If I want a beer, I touch my ear and he comes running. If I scratch my nose he knows that means Jack & Coke. You raised that boy right...let me buy you a beer!" Happily I agreed, thinking how happy I was that I was going to live.
