The Performer

I pulled into the hospital parking garage.  The gate was down.  The man in the booth asked me if I was visiting.  

"Clergy," I said. 

"Clergy?"

"More like a life coach."

He stared at me.  

"O.K.  You got me.  I just came for the food."

Old schtick.  Been here too many times before.  

When I walked into my college roommate's room, he was alone.  He didn't look bad at all for someone who has so many medical issues.  They had just put a steel plate in his neck to shore up a cervical vertebra that was broken.  We hadn't talked for about a year or more.  No problem.  Things went along swimmingly.  

In about half an hour, his wife came in and the dynamic changed.  There were health care people and rehab facility people and I heard more about his health than I am sure he was comfortable with.  When that was all over and it was just the three of us in the room, I did what I realize I do.  I performed.  

"Oh, my. . . this is good.  We haven't laughed in forever."

Yea.  I am. I am a performer.  You would think I led a happy existence.  The reality is much different.  It occured to me that I've been putting up a front my entire life.  

Alone, I've always been melancholy.  Lately, I would cherish melancholy.  But I'll say no more. 

When I got back to my mother's house, her 91 year old neighbor rode up the driveway on her three wheeler with her phone playing "The William Tell Overture" and her little dog in a basket on the front handlebars.  She has macular degenerative disease and can't see shit, but man, it doesn't stop her.  

Mom's neighbors like it when I am there.  I make them laugh.  I perform.  

"You're good with people," my mother says.  

Yea, yea, yea.  

"It's what I did for a living," I say.  "My job was to make people happy.  Now it is just an automatic response." 

The more I think about it now, it was probably a response to growing up around dangerous people.  You'd rather get along.  It is probably, too, why I don't have trouble being around people whose political beliefs are far different than mine.  I had to bob and weave growing up and hanging around the older guys who were only a few years away from prison.  I was never the toughest guy in the room.  

Rodney Dangerfield said, "When I was growing up, I told my father everybody hated me.  He said don't be stupid, you haven't met everybody yet." 

That joke just popped into my head.  Growing up, I guess.  It's o.k.  It broke the semi-narrative line.  

I don't think this story is going to have a happy ending.  

(link)