Friday, May 28, 2010

Memoirs

I have decided to write my memoirs! (Unfortunately for my readers who are also music lovers this may necessitate the postponement of my 2023-2025 violin recitals.)


I want my memoirs to be up to snuff and of a very high quality so the most stringent standards must apply. The criteria for my memoirs are as follows.


1: They must be short and easy to read. Most of my friends have short attention spans.


2: The book should have no sharp edges. Most of my friends read in bed and tend to nod off early and have tender skin.


3: It must contain enough lies to make it really exciting because most of my friends’ lives aren’t any more interesting than mine and why would I want to bore them to death?


With those criteria in mind I have chosen the following true-life experiences to expound upon in my memoirs.


The time I wet my pants on the Greyhound Bus.

The time I shaved the hair off my forearms.

The time I spent the night under a bush in Chelmsford, England.

The time I left my four-year-old daughter at a rest stop.

The time I didn’t meet Willie Nelson (Yes, I’m still whining about that.)

The time I dropped the baby. (I’m not saying which one.)

The time I told that really cute guy I was only 35.


As you can see, it’s going to be very hard sorting out which of the momentous occasions in my life were the absolutely most momentous. But I’m working on it.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Willie Nelson Has Cut Off His Pigtails!

Willie Nelson has cut off his pigtails!


Just when I thought the news couldn’t get worse, what with the economy in disaster mode, British oil smothering the Gulf Coast and volcanoes and earth quakes shaking up the world, this sad and sorry news crept silently across the bottom of my TV screen this morning.


The news people, who have no trouble articulating the tragic effects of all kinds of natural and man made disasters, evidently couldn’t bear to speak of it. I might not have noticed the report at all if I hadn’t been distracted by the commentator brushing at a fly hovering beneath his chin and causing it to drop to the bottom of the screen dangerously close to his coffee cup!


Willie Nelson without his pigtails! What can I say? Does this change the world or what? And in case you think me shallow and sophomoric I want you to know that I care nothing about the Lohann girl’s alcohol content, the pitiful childhood of Jessee James or what the odds are of all the conceptions in Hollywood becoming twins by natural means.


If you think I inflate the importance of this day it means you have never heard about The Day I Almost Met Willie Nelson!


The truest truism ever uttered is the one where at the end of your life you are far more likely to regret the things you did not do than the things you did. The day I almost met Willie was a perfect example.


I was going to the fair, The Sedalia State Fair to be exact, at Sedalia wouldn’t you know. Always an early up-and-outer type person I left before dawn from North Missouri to be there in time for the 8:00 a.m. Dairy Goat Milking contest. I got a good parking place and walked onto the empty fair grounds.


It was too early for most fair goers and the venders were just opening up. At a tiny coffee booth a guy was stacking his cups and getting ready for the crowd. His coffee smelled good. If I was a coffee drinker I would have bought some. Then this guy crossed the roadway right in front of me. He looked just like Willie Nelson, bandana scarf, pigtails, blue jeans... He went to the coffee booth and started talking to the big guy.


My thinking went like this. “He looks just like Willie Nelson would have looked twenty years ago”. He really looked a lot better than Willie Nelson did on TV.


And then..smugly.. ‘Why would a grown man walk around trying to look like someone else?”


The Willie Nelson looking man nodded pleasantly as I passed him and the coffee booth. I nodded back.


At my seat in the bleachers a good ten minutes before the Dairy Goat judging I dug out my fair program and right there on the front cover was a smiling picture of tonight's headliner, Willie Nelson, bandana, pigtails and all. He was at the fair!


I could have stopped to chat! I could have bought a cup of coffee and nursed it forever!

I could have met Willie Nelson!


But I didn’t do any of those things and the only thing that made me feel better was the determination that when that happens again I will buy that cup of coffee!


But how will I recognize him? The pigtails are gone! And there will be no need for the bandana I suppose so that will be gone too! I have kept that day tucked away in my mind under the heading of “unfinished business” for so long I feel like there is a great big hole there where Willie’s pigtails ought to be!


This is not good news.


Willie Nelson has cut off his pigtails.