Come on now. You have wished on stars and lucky pennies and chicken bones. It doesn’t matter how skeptical you are, now and then we all would be glad of a little supernatural help to make a wish come true. We want the winning lottery ticket or the Lexus or Jesse’s girl.
Envy starts early. Believe it or not, one of the first things I coveted was patience. There were no Legos when I was young but there were Erector sets. I had one in its tin box with all the pieces snug in their special slots. What I did not have was the patience to build the good things. Michael and Billy Davis, my younger next-door neighbors, had insight and patience.
For those who grew up after children were unable to distinguish between food and pieces of metal, toys with small parts were outlawed and Erector sets went away. What was an Erector Set? Picture the Eiffel Tower. It looks like something built right out of the box. Erector Sets were miniature girders complete with bolts, washers, and screws plus electric motors and wheels and frames. Armed with the enclosed screwdriver and wrench (miniature of course,) a skilled, creative and patient child could build the Eiffel Tower and all sorts of wonderful things… airplanes with spinning propellors, suspension bridges, motorized cars and even that ultimate 1950’s space race, sci-fi creation, a ROBOT.
I could build a wagon and with a little help, a go-cart although, with the motor mounted the wrong way, the go-cart only ran in reverse. Michael and Billy, although younger but infinitely more patient and skilled once built a Robot fully two feet tall that could roll around on wheels and move its arms. It even had flashing eyes. I was crushed by their patience and ingenuity plus I had to back my go-cart out of there or the robot would have crushed it too.
By age eight, like every budding cowboy, I wanted a horse. Joe Hinson, just down the street had a pony in his back yard and I couldn’t understand why my parents weren’t giving in to my pleas for just a small pony. Later in life I learned to ride and found that although horses are beautiful in form and concept, there are some people they just don’t like. I was kicked, bitten and thrown enough that I got the message. Lesson learned: The things we wish for might come back and bite us on the…and yes one did. A big roan with a bad attitude. I forgave him. He was a gelding and had a right to be ornery.
At some point in life, we all want to be stars. I learned early that my star was not in the constellation of sports. I flatter myself to say I was mediocre and have written previously about my shortcomings. Even as an adult, hope still stirred for a moment. I enjoyed racquetball and thought myself a pretty fair player. Under pressure from a friend, I signed up for one of only two tournaments I have ever entered. I won the first round and for the second round was matched against a family friend who happened to be married to one of my old flames. I humiliated him. He was so embarrassed about slaughtering me on the court that he could barely look me in the eye.
As a card-carrying member of the Beatles generation, I wanted to be on the Ed Sullivan Show performing for an audience of screaming girls. I have told stories about singing folk songs and performing on a small scale with two of my friends. To call us folk singers is the equivalent to calling yourself an NFL coach when you play fantasy football. It was pretend and we were ok about it. In our limited adolescent brains, we were the Kingston Trio. Once, as a counsellor at Presbyterian Church Camp when John and Chuck weren’t along, two of the other counsellors, both very attractive girls, asked me to join them in singing a couple of folk songs as part of entertainment night. There we were, Toni, Sis and Mike singing “If I had a Hammer” “This Land is Your Land” and the mandatory “Kum Ba Yah”. The captive audience roared after our performance and I was feeling pretty swell until a girl from my church came up and said, “Y’all sounded good but why do you wave your arms around so much?” I guess I was more Chubby Checker than Bob Dylan.
As we reach middle age, I believe we often wish for “Class Reunion Status”. We want the people who knew us “way back when” to see us as successful, fulfilled and happy.
We’re not, you know…not any of us. As successful as some of us seem, there is always a step on the ladder that we want to take and if you believe you have fulfilled your life’s work, then where do you go from there? As for “Happy”, it is a word I have grown to dislike. No one is happy all the time. Perhaps we are content with where life has led us but happiness varies from day to day.
I always spent time wishing I could write like this or that author. I wanted to write like Salinger when I read Catcher in the Rye or like T. S. Eliot when I read “The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock”, or even Pat Conroy when I read The Water is Wide. I wished I had written every great line I ever read. When I go through page after page of my early writings I can see the attempt to copy someone’s style. Eventually, I had to settle, as we all do. I found I had to write like me…not for the ages and not for millions of readers but for the people whose lives resonate with similar memories and for those who share my genetics.
That’s the thing about wishes. Any time we wish for something, it is a sign of discontent. Sometimes it is an internal statement that we just don’t measure up to what we think we should be…but more often, it is about what others think. We wish for the things that we hope will make people notice and maybe even envy us.
I remember someone once said, “I have only known one perfect family and I didn’t know them very well.” Look behind any of our smiles and you will find regrets and disappointments and losses. Buddhist philosophy says that “Life is Suffering”. I don’t believe that but I believe that all life has its suffering intermingled with joy and delight and wonder.
As a man in what I hope is the mid November of my life, my wishes have changed. More and more often they come in the form of things I wish I had done.
We lose people throughout our lives and working with the History Museum reminds me time and again of the things I wish I had asked my Dad and Mom. I remember fragments of stories they told me but wish I had asked for more. I would be okay about losing them if heaven just had a help line so I could call and say, “Mom, tell me about the Harris house at the corner of White Street and the Charlotte Highway” or “Dad, tell me more about the year you moved to Fort Mill from Union”.
But enough about the wishes that didn’t come true. There is a Garth Brooks song called “Sometimes I Thank God for Unanswered Prayers”. (Yet another line I wish I had written) We often wish in the moment without knowing where life will lead us. I could not have wished for more. My house is warm, (Granted I just paid $500 in repairs to keep it so) there is plenty of food, and I have friends who care about me. I have children and grandchildren who fill me with hugs and love and I have live-in girlfriend/wife/best friend who is just whacky enough to make every day an adventure.
I am content except I am still looking to pen that perfect phrase…and that patience thing…when do I get some of that.
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