At a business meeting a while back I noticed that my voice
had become unusually raspy and I couldn’t seem to clear it. Being a hardened
survivor of throat cancer and an all around manly man, I faced the specter of
unexplained throat problems as you might expect; I became a simpering
hypochondriac, certain that every cough or headache was the confirmation that
the cancer had returned and I would have to face radiation again.
In the end it turned out that, as the man said, the only
thing I had to fear was fear itself. What I was afraid might be a cancerous
tumor turned out to be some scar tissue that, aside from leaving my voice with
a bit of an “Eastwood” quality, was perfectly harmless.
Fear can do funny things to a guy. My natural state has
normally been to walk through life happily under the illusion that I am in
control and seeking just enough adventure to exaggerate in the stories I
subsequently tell about them and the columns I write.
I haven’t been writing for a while now because, while fear
can do funny things to you, its rare that you find humor or adventure to be
exaggerated for fun and profit when you’re living in fear.
I’m not particularly proud of how easily I became frightened
over this fairy mild threat. The thing is, I have lived a pretty full life and
often faced potentially dangerous situations, but I never really took my own
morality seriously until cancer killed my sister and my cousin then beat the
crap out of me.
My wife laughed when told her that I had never considered
that I might actually die some day until cancer made that possibility seem
real. Please don’t misunderstand, she wasn’t laughing at my fear, she was
laughing at the confirmation of her long held belief that I had never grown up.
They say that smoking cigarettes as a child will stunt your
growth; I never smoked cigarettes as a child but apparently what I did smoke stunted
my emotional growth. I’ve never really accepted adulthood; I still laugh at
public flatulence, I’m painfully self-indulgent and I still believe that the
Three Stooges (the original Three Stooges) were comic geniuses.
I’m one of those lucky guys who has always managed to get
paid to play. For years I’ve been paid to play with fighter jets and recently
I’ve been paid to write about whatever I want to. Professionally speaking, it
really doesn’t suck to be me.
Sandra has always known that about me but, because she is a
woman, she has always believed that some day I would grow up and make a good
husband and father. She’s endured a lot of crap while waiting for me to grow
up; still I think it surprised her to discover that right through my mid-50’s I
still had that teenaged sense of immortality and I was afraid, for the first
time ever, that cancer might take me before I was ready to go.
I’m not a shrewd judge of the feminine mind (no really, it’s
true) but I don’t think she was all that impressed when I finally stopped being
self-indulgent and making decisions based on what would amused me and started
making decisions based on fear of…well just about everything.
I was so busy being scared that I almost didn’t notice that
Sandra had quit waiting for me to grow up. She didn’t leave me or anything like
that; she just wasn’t waiting for me to grow up anymore. That didn’t scare me so
much as it pissed me off that, after 25 years of waiting, I was afraid to be
the man that she waited for.
It seems that there are a lot of things can hurt you or
those you care about when you’re a mortal who is cares about the consequences
of his actions. Life stopped being fun and, to be honest, I really don’t see
the percentage in living that way.
It turns out that I grew up to be a guy who plays for a
living , still laughs at the Stooges and that’s cool with me. Oh, and I’m
married to an artist whose career took her to Europe for a while and that’s
cool with me, too. Turns out she knew
all along who I’d grow up to be and, as always, she was right.
As for mortality, fear and waiting for someone to change;
you can keep that stuff, I don’t think I want any part of it. Don’t get me
wrong, I know all too well that we are all mortal and I consider every day I
wake up to be a bonus, it’s just that I’m not afraid of mortality any more.
I’ve seen the re-make of Arthur and I hear they’ve re-made
the Stooges so I’m certain now that I don’t want to live forever, in fact, if
they re-make Blazing Saddles I may kill myself.
So I’m writing again…from my wife’s place in Europe and loving
it. I’ve had some awesome adventures over here and some really funny stuff has
happened and I can’t wait to tell you about them in the weeks to come.
El Guapo is back……..life is good!
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