Freddogg Off The Chain

I am a finalist for “Rookie of the Year” on the Don Ameche All Cocoon Team. You remember the movie where the old guys in Florida swam in a prohibited pool that was a uterus for germinating alien pods that gave them renewed youth and vigor.

And you know how some people freely discriminate against others from the same cultural group like when a person of color threatens a person a darker color with a warning like “You better back off you black bitch!”

I’m the person who sometimes calls people old and or fat but not to their faces and not to others just mumbling to myself because I think I’m entering a period of self loathing in my life and anyway I’m tired and being well adjusted and productive because where does that get you other than the same place if your not responsible.

I was covering a road race Sunday and you should see the way some runners give you the, body up and down once over, like a middle aged loser checking out the prom queen. It’s because their weight loss solidifies a feeling of self worth using you as a standard of what can happen if you’re not narcissistic, self obsessed with diminished sex drive unless you’re alone with yourself.I am a granddaddy Mack daddy beast to use hip-hop “I ain’t tryin to be no bony assed 8 minute miler. Some time keeper said, ”Could you step aside you make a better door than a window and I certainly can’t see around you” and people giggled like that was a put down and I realized they viewed me differently than I viewed myself but I’m a funny wide guy and not allowed to smack people because it’s bad for business.

Saturday night I stopped at “my bar” after dropping off grand children to listen to a blues and soul group. I love loud and tight music coming from a band that has black and white voices. I was just sitting at the bar next to an Irish friend not trying to be better or worse, younger or older, thinner or fatter, just content, like a calico in a window sill.I laughed when the retired mailman came up behind my crouched down photographer and did a dirty dancing number on him and I thought, just good clean fun in a small down on a dreary Saturday night.

A soulful classic was played and people began to dance. I was tapped on my right shoulder and turned slowing as the vertebra in my neck made ratcheting noises. I heard one young male bartender say to the other, ”Did you hear that crackling. I think it’s going to storm again.”I waiting for the depth of field function of my weakening eyeballs to auto focus and there she was, a red died haired, deep set make-up shrouded hollow eyed , 75 year old barfly who looked at me with bad attitude and said, ”Do you dance?”“If machine gun bullets were aimed at my feet by Arab gunmen I don’t dance. There have been times when I’ve gotten funky but never dancing.”

She looked at me like, ”you big fucking loser” walked away and I felt like such a schmuk but it wouldn’t have mattered if she were the 25 year old Belarus girl from the window of Dunkin doughnuts where I had just spilled my coffee that afternoon trying to pull it through my window.Like Frank Sinatra sang, ”I don’t dance, don’t ask me.”By the way, planned, radical, written grouchyness is therapeutic and I should teach it at the Academy of Life Long Learning while I’m “still on top of my game” like a prideful aging lion with lumbar issues.
What about you? Don’t you ever want to come loose and just bury people figuratively speaking.

Peace Freddogg