June 19, 1972
Happy Birthday to me.
ETA: June 19, 1972 was also a Monday. And Time Magazine so thoughtfully put out this highly disturbing cover on that date. Thanks, Time, for marking my birthdate in such a memorable way.
Father's Day
I miss you, Daddy.
Happy Father's Day.
Some sad news
When I chatted with Carrie early last week in the downstairs cafeteria at work, it was one of those quick little conversations that you have with a co-worker who you like but never see much. Her group used to sit next to mine, then they were moved down two floors to the other main newsroom and we sort of lost touch. And then a couple of years ago, she'd taken time off to have her first child, returned for a spell, then again taken a sabbatical from being one of our most excellent reporters to have another baby.
We laughed a bit about how much fun it would be to get the old eighth floor gang back together, mesh the old Special Projects crew (her bunch) with my ajc.com/sports group and watch major sports figures squirm and sweat whenever she or Ann, Jane or any of the other "girls" sweetly cooed "Well, hel-LO there Mister [Major Sports Figure Under The Gun Here]... Got a minute to talk about that [trip, cash envelope, mistress, etc.] we hear you're associated with?" Hee. Man, it was fun overhearing just
their end of those phone conversations. You did NOT want to be on the other end.
Anytime I see an email in my at-work box titled "Some sad news" I know we've lost someone in our AJC family or in our extended family. Carrie's husband died in a single-car accident Sunday. He was only 46 and had recently been battling cancer when their second child was born. I'd never met him but I'd heard her joke about them taking a plane trip back from St. Maarten once. "Yeah, that was fun," she'd laughed. "Two super-tall people stuck on a plane for six hours."
I'm a person who has faith in God. I believe that there are reasons for everything, even the most painful happenings in our lives. Somehow, there is even a reason for this, too. I don't understand what it could be. But right now, my heart hurts for this kind, funny, sweet lady who, when I asked her just last week how her kids were doing, smiled the biggest smile, laughed her infectious laugh and said "They. Are. Craaaaaaaazy."
But I digress
A friend at work recently celebrated his 33rd birthday. Or at least he said
he did. Kind of. What he actually said, when I asked if his birthday weekend had been a nice one, was something like "Well, yes and no." And when I said "Sorry to hear that. I was hoping it would just be a 'Yes,'" he continued, "I spent the weekend thinking about how old I am now." I told him I can absolutely relate. I turn 34 on June 19 and every year since I turned 30, each passing birthday gives me pause to wonder where another year has gone and why I feel like I haven't really taken full advantage of it. It's hard to believe that I've been out of high school now for 16 years when 1990 doesn't seem so long ago. I wonder where my youth went.
The truth is that I know exactly where it went. It went to college for a ridiculously long time - far too long, honestly. It went to work weeknights (after sitting in class all day during said extended college tenure) at the record store. It worked weekends instead of having fun. It never took vacations when it was still young enough to go out and party until all hours of the night. It spent that time reading cement block-sized English lit tomes in order to get good grades so that someday, when it finally graduated from college, it could grow up and get a job. Now it's pretty well spent and it doesn't mind going to bed at 9:30 on a summer night, something that would have been unthinkable when it was a little kid in the '70s or early '80s - or even when it was a teenager in the late '80s, a 20something hipster in the '90s.
So my friend and I commiserated about being old and apparently lame compared to all the teenagers and 20somethings surrounding us these days. It's their world now; we just take up space in it. But we gave ourselves credit for one thing: Doing this - blogging.
The Birthday Boy agreed with me when I posited that the now-30somethings of our generation (The Generation Formerly Known As "X" - a tag which I've always hated) have always been willing to put it all out there. Before the internet came along (during our heyday), we were cranking out 'zines like fools - publishing our own homemade manifestos on anything and everything, the crummier-looking the better. We embraced e-mail like parents embrace a long-lost prodigal son or daughter; it was as if the mothership of EZ communication came down to us, beckoning us to spend even
more of our days hacking away, yammering on about... about... well... whatever in newsgroups like alt.tv.x-files. We could spend literal hours online, defending our position that Mulder and Scully had been having an affair all along during the series run. Don't believe us? Check our website: www.xphiles.com. Now we IM each other, we text message - we do all that. And yet we, one of the smallest generations of the 20th Century, still feel this great need to share many of our thoughts publicly, in complete sentences for much bigger age groups to read.
Maybe this continued sense of misspent youth that just keeps slipping away, a year at a time with each swiftly passing June, is why I've been listening to my first real rock star crush, Rick Springfield circa 1982, all week. I miss the days when all I cared about was Rick, the radio and rollerskating - in precisely that order.
63295
63295.
That's my race number for the Peachtree Road Race. I am in Time Group Six.
This? Sucks.
Layabout
I suck at life right now. This afternoon was glorious - low humidity, sunshine, moderate heat - and although it doesn't get dark until 9 p.m., I didn't even make an effort to hit the park and WALK, much less jog, the two miles that I'd planned. How pathetic.
The Peachtree Road Race - a 10K, 6.2-mile road race - happens July 4. This will be my fourth PRR and, barring last year's "Thank God I Just Lived To Tell How Sucky My Time Was Because I Had The Flu And Ran The Damn Thing Anyway Like A Fool" race from Hell itself (in which I posted a time SEVEN MINUTES over my average time), this may be my worst. Every year I say "Oh, I am SO unprepared! I just have NOT trained!" but really, I have. Well, this year? It's true. I am so unprepared. I just have not trained.
Caviat: I am finishing up a five-day course of meds for a mild sinus infection/throat inflammation. I had to go to my ENT this past Friday. It's no excuse but I have been coughing all day, albeit not as seriously as I have been all week.
Mommy
Mommy died early Friday morning. She'd been fighting stage four Hodgkin's Disease for years and, tough as she was, the disease finally overtook her. I hate that. It isn't right that someone with such a real zest for life, someone so ebullient and just plain fun to be around isn't here with us anymore. It hurts that she passed away in pain.
To those of us in The Group, they've always just been Mommy and Daddy - never really Mrs. Rafferty or Mr. Rafferty and certainly not Joan or Jim. (This is the South; that's not proper here. You show respect.) They're Vanessa's parents but they adopted us, too, and sent us Christmas cards, treated us like we were their kids when we were all in college together.
A party at Thom and Vanessa's brightened when Mommy and Daddy dropped by. I'd camp out with Mommy on a couch and dish. Mommy and my mama met a few times and got along fine, talking about the old days when ladies dressed up for a night out at the club. They were both women who understood the value of a well-made martini back in the '60s.
If Vanessa was Daddy's girl, Daddy was Mommy's baby. I'd housesit for Vanessa and Thom back in college and Mommy would call me and talk to me for a couple of hours at a time. I enjoyed the conversation, which was always intelligent, witty and sparkling. I'd hear tales of their life while Daddy was in the Army and Mommy spoke with pride about "The Colonel" and how he was Daddy to her two children from her first marriage. Daddy, not her first husband, was her true love.
Vanessa, Thom, T.J., then the youngest grandchild in the family, and Daddy were standing on the tee that July 4th morning. All excellent golfers, they were carrying on a Rafferty family tradition: Getting in early morning Independence Day golf before breakfast at the Fort McPherson Golf Club. I'd been invited to come along. Mommy and I were relaxing in the golf cart, watching as the four began taking their turns teeing off in the above order.
Finally, Daddy stood at the tee alone, a mild wind blowing his white hair as he stared down the fairway into the sun. It was completely silent. Daddy stiffened and readied the driver like a pro. I glanced over at Mommy, who was watching her husband with a broad smile. So proud. So proud of Daddy, of her family. She leaned over to me and whispered into my ear.
"This is when he shines."
Some other sucker
Question: Do everyday people even GO to concerts anymore?
I ask this because my man, John Mayer, hits ATL October 14. Unfortunately, he's coming to Chastain Park Ampitheater, a much smaller - and pricier - venue than Lakewood Ampitheater, where he usually plays to a humongous crowd. So while concertgoers enjoy the benefits of a more intimate setting with (supposedly) better sound quality, you pay out the wazoo for it.
Or in my case, you don't. Because you just don't get tickets to start with.
Chastain sold the show, far as I can tell, on the sly. Not through Ticketmaster, but some other way by which people had to buy Mayer tix for $65 (!!!) AND purchase tix to ANOTHER show in some Delta/Chastain Concert Series for late summer/early fall. Give me a break. That's a ripoff.
Ticket brokers have THEIR seats, though - oh, you bet they do. The cheapest going rate at present is $160 for way back orchestra seats. Now, much as I love JM, I'm not paying that to see him in concert. I'm not paying that to see anyone - not even the Non-Dead, Non-Fat Elvis At His Prime - in concert. Because. That. Is. Ridiculous. To me, $65 is ridicks, too, actually.
So I'm going to sweat it out until right around the show date in October, keep checking craigslist.org for Atlanta and hope there's some poor soul out there who has decent tix but will have to sell them at the last minute. That person, in my ideal scenario, won't be able to scalp me for big bucks because they'll be in the "I've got to get rid of these. I don't want to be out $130-plus" position and I will swoop in with cash at the ready, set to pay a semi-exorbitant price but not enough to disgust me.
And then I look at what I just wrote. My point is...?
You try to be a nice guy
I just don't understand people.
