Grey t-shirts, hips and other life forces
That can’t be right. A recent assignment included estimating life expectancy with an on-line tool that asks fourteen questions. Year of birth, gender, height, weight, do you smoke, live down river from a fertilizer factory … that kind of stuff. Answer the questions and out pops a number. Ninety are you kidding me one.
Yikes, that’s somewhere between two to five decades too many. No questions about fondness for motorcycles, mountain-climbing or Italian Beef sandwiches though, so the estimate seems imperfect, at best. Which gets me thinking about where perfection lies on the life-o-meter. I think you gots your things you don’t like. You gots your things you like. You gots your things that ain’t quite perfect. You gots your perfect. But in all that thinking, there’s some stuff that may or may not be perfect, but is just right.
It’s a beautiful day, so let’s skip through all the things in the not like bin and pick up the discussion with the things that are almost perfect. For sake of discussion, I’ll be leaving people out of the mix, moving forward.
Sweat. Root beer floats. Two-stroke engines. The city management profession. Motorcycles. The Tetons. Trees. Sunrise. Chicago. Thanksgiving. Sponge Bob. Rubber Gloves. Wrigley Field. Life. The Replacements.
Sweat usually means something good is happening but it can also mean you’re in Mississippi. Root beer floats may not be as healthy as I hope they are. Two-stroke engines pollute. The day job is swell but not quite center-field. Motorcycles are great but cars get to use the roads too, and they’re full-on killers. The Tetons are too far away. Trees are fantastic, but can go rogue every now and then. Sunrise means another day, but maybe the night was really going well. Chicago needs a city manager and about five hundred thousand more jobs and the same number fewer guns. Thanksgiving has dishes to do. Sponge Bob still hasn’t explained Pearl. Rubber gloves are a blessing, but usually means something really bad has or is about to happen. Wrigley Field has electricity. Life has sorrow and / or missed opportunity, and a few jerks. The Replacements were almost perfect, and that might have been their perfection. Maybe they are on the wrong list?
The perfection list. Jeep waves. Ed Hooper’s Nighthawks. Ray Bay Aviators. Calatrava’s early work. The Shut Up Donnie, You’re Out of Your Element meme (1/20/17 – 1/20/21). Elwood’s Cheese-whiz scene. The guttural howl of a P-51. The sweep of an F-86’s wings. The hips of the fifth gen Camaro. Which reminds me, Catherine Zeta Jones walking away from George Clooney down the hotel hallway in Intolerable Cruelty.
All those are perfect things, but they’re not quite things I like everything about. Some Jeep waves don’t get returned. Hopper’s painting, summing up the inequity of existence. One guy alone. The other gets a redhead. Krusty-Krab, Unfair! Ray Ban Aviators are perfect, but not universally suitable. Same for Calatrava’s early work. Dan Aykroyd somehow not winning (or, to be accurate, not being nominated) Best Supporting Actor in 1981. I went into the public sector and don’t own a P-51, or an F-86. They softened the rear quarter panel’s crispness in the sixth gen Camaro. The Intolerable Cruelty scene might be too perfect. In sum, there are things that can be perfect or even too perfect, that I don’t like everything about.
Then there are things I like everything about, whether they’re perfect or not. Peter Egan columns. Pilot V5 pens (blue). Burr Oaks, Coast Redwoods and Aspens. Grey t-shirts. Converse low tops. Mountain-climbing. Seaside's new mission statement (Include Innovate Inspire). Seeing kids play on park improvements or graduate from schools I had something to do with. Teac EQA-10 Equalizers. Homemade pecan pancakes. The Prairie Crossing house. Baseball. When someone who reports to me becomes a city manager. Joyous defiance. When the song you’re singing in your head comes on the radio, especially when the song is the Ramones’ Brain Is Hanging Upside Down or Sinatra’s The Way You Look Tonight. And … just to make this list the one of the three that’s definitive, one screwdriver, in particular.
I’ve had the screwdriver since eighth grade, when my first dirt-bike needed constant carburetor fiddling. Technically, that makes it my oldest friend. The other stuff is mostly self-explanatory. The happiness of singing and well-placed defiance. We hold these truths to be self-evident --- that was a good one. The joy of watching employees grow and kids having fun. The accountability of the smallest of things in baseball. The honesty and proportion of Margaret McCurry’s “Halsey” home design. Enduring love embedded in an unassuming weekend breakfast. The dancing lights of the Teac in the dark, in college or the FOS. The visceral immersion of climbing, a three-word mission statement, the humble righteousness of Chucks and grey t’s, the connectedness of Aspens and Redwoods, the resilience of Burr Oaks. The tactile flow of a V5 pen on a blank sheet of paper and the (as yet, unrealized) hope the result will be something, someday, that gets somewhere close to the lithesome bliss of an Egan piece.
Summing up the “like everything about them” group, there’s elegance, authenticity and modesty. There’s joy and simplicity and love, with no claim for perfection. Life expectancy is whatever it will be. A simple, joyus and loving life, with elegance of purpose, authenticity of intent and modesty of execution --- that can't be wrong.
