Simplicity is a wonderful gift. I love is to just sit in the back yard on a cool, clear day… my dog asleep by my side… slowly digesting the pages of a favorite author… every so often glancing up to watch the large crew of foreign men working on the construction of my 5,000 square foot lake home.
Oh, how we all long for simplicity.
If I replied to all the email in my inbox I’d have an [rhymes with election] for 6 months. I’m just being honest and transparent. My relatives in Nigeria expect no less.
I felt completely alone even though I was in a crowd. Not a big crowd or even a medium sized crowd but a smallish crowd. Even so, I felt alone. All alone. Then I looked up and everyone was looking at me. “Stop staring!” I screamed. Again I burst out, “To hell with you all and stop staring!” I don’t think I’ll ever be ask back to career day at my son’s elementary school.
At first it was wine. Then wine coolers. Then Lemonade (the hard kind). Then Wild Turkey straight and neat. That was the first and last day I tried wine. And a big “sorry” to the kind folks at the Cracker Barrel on I-4 near Lakeland.
I don’t live in what the experts are calling a walkable neighborhood. You can walk all you want in my neighborhood, it’s just not safe. I happen to live on the seedy side of town. Yes, I live in the Red Light Polka District. There is polka music blaring at all hours of the night not to mention the roving gangs of vigilante tuba players. Once I saw a man with an accordion taunting an elderly lady to dance to the “Beer Barrel Polka”.
Read more about my recovery from Polka addiction here.
If you ever meet a guy named James Totter at the grocery store. Don’t follow him back to his house, go to his office or hide in the back seat of his car even if you are just trying to find out if he’s the guy who invented the Teeter Totter. Trust me on this one.
What a wonderful trip. I saw so many who had so little. Yet they seemed content and full of joy. My heart welled up with compassion for those “hungry eyes” looking at me through the glass.
I will never forget those precious people who chose the “Bronze Travel Package” on our trip to Maui. And we where filled with humility that we had taken our travel agent’s advice to go with the “Diamond VIP Travel Package”. What a wake up call!
One of my favorite causes is Celebrity Compassion International (CCI). However, with annual incomes nearly 100 times the average american total household income one would think, “why do the big celebrity’s need our compassion?”
Well, here’s the rest of the story. The cost of being famous is huge! The clothes. The parties. The plasitic surgery. Cars. Boats. Beach cottages. And that’s only the beginning!
Imagine the lawsuits, paternity settlements and gambling habits. Being a celebrity is expensive.
The cost is high. Even too high for most celebrities. And that’s were CCI steps in — for $75.00 dollars a month you can make a lasting investent in a life of your celebrity. One they will never forget during the few minutes after their personal assistant has them sign the back of your check.
Teach your kids to give to the needy.
*Special thanks to Brad’s Pitts and Randy Elrod and Watercooler Wednesday.
In the late 80’s I was a founding member of a mime troupe called “dc No Talking”.
Let me back up a bit.
When I was 8 or 9 people used to call me “Tubby”. Not because I was heavy, but because I always preferred baths to showers. The tub was one of my “special places” (the other was Tulsa, Oklahoma). Anyhoo, it was in the tub where I heard a quiet voice. It said one word… pantomime-troupe. Over the ensueing years the art of pantomime became everything to me. Now fast forward to 1989. I formed a three-man mime troupe with my best friends Mick and Kelvin. We called ourselves “dc No Talking” in tribute to the Christian Rap supergroup dc Talk. Everyone said it was a clever name. Our specialty was original pantomime routines to dc Talk songs. Tubby, Mick and Kelvin achieved small town notoriety. We even did a public access cable show that somehow got pretty big in Nairobi, Kenya (I guess our lousy time slot was a blessing and a curse).
Those were the days my friends. Those were the days.
