At Least They're Committed

The first person I told at work about my retirement — other than my boss who died four days later — was my dearest, most revered friend who introduced me to the team 20 years ago. And, no surprise, because he is the nicest guy, he said the nicest thing!

“You’re life is always full of mini adventures that no one can equate to and you gotta love that, I think it’s pretty amazing.”

I don’t care how addled my brain becomes, I’ll remember that. It’s pretty special, just like he is!

What to do, what to do. Dear God, I’ll work hard if You’ll help me find my muse again! I did enjoy writing some stories throughout my, um, storied career, but now that I’ll have to time to ‘find myself’ through words, I’m coming up blank.

I need to think of it as a new chapter, a clean page, like an untouched piece of paper verses a void.

What are words anyway? (She asks, getting super philosophical.)

Face it, nearly every statement is up for interpretation. Especially when words are heard, versus read.

For instance, Hotel California by the Eagles. I originally thought the line was:

“There were horses down the corridor, I thought I heard them say.”

Sure, that made a lot less sense than, “There were voices down the corridor,” but it was so much more mysterious to envision creepy, talking horses, eyes glowing red in stables at the end of a long hallway offering sarcastic greetings in the murky dark.

And in Green Day’s She, I thought the line was “How’d you like to be the one that’s made life tough on you?”

It’s actually, “Are you locked up in a world that’s been planned out for you?”

Grammatically, in my version ‘that’ should be ‘who,’ but since that’s a common mistake among English-speaking societies, it was still fathomable.

Oh, here’s a fun one — and it wasn’t just me who thought it was that Nazareth in Hair of the Dog says, “Awesome power, golden shower” (which evidently is fairly disgusting should it have been that) when it was actually “Red hot mamma, velvet charmer.” Go figure.

There’s 38 Special’s If I’d Been the One, which in all fairness has that very line in the title, but I heard it as “What if I didn’t want to say goodbye.” I still think that sounds cooler. More resignation, less retaliation.

Then there’s the latest, which makes me really sad honestly because now the song doesn’t seem nearly as clever. It’s Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da by the Beatles. I thought it said “Happy as a raptor in the marketplace” when it turns out it’s “Happy ever after in the marketplace.” Bummer. It was far more charming to imagine gleeful hawks swooping down into vendors’ carts as they snatched exotic fish, prime beef, and fresh tomatoes from the stands along the strip.

The lovely thing about imaginations is you can often interpret any set of given words and way you like. If you’re wise, it’s lovely that is. It can be a really bad thing, too, especially when you look at the way these crazies running around in red hats are attempting to distort Jesus’s words.

But there’s little interpretation needed when a friend says something as kind as, “You’re life is always full of mini adventures.” No mystery on that meaning and although life isn’t easy for anyone, I think that looking at it as an adventure is the the way to go.