Stories my neighbor tells

I remember MLK Jr. day dubbed as a “day on” rather than a “day off.” I was dressed to hit all the offices I had on my list only to find out that it was a CNMI official holiday. So I went to the beach, the only decent thing to do on a holiday, isn’t it?

He is retired, a sprite vacationer to Florida, drives his wife to NMC and shops at 87. He tells stores and I am “all ears” to that.

When I sub-taught, the students’ imagination flew often on interstellar travel and outer space settlements when asked of their dreams. One declared that he was a citizen of the universe after he heard me say I was a “global citizen.” His imagination is replete with rocket ships and outer space speeds. It plays electronic games, which strategize on how to win conflicts in otherworldly settings!

He and his peers are in the “do the impossible” mindset. No quarrels there. Unless they totally ignore the here-and-now, which often is a concrete spacetime we run away from, a pity since many demonstrate levelheaded intelligence and considerable wit.

I’ve written of a few incidences when my neighbor’s quote drove my point home, but object lessons are not his intent, and neither is it primarily mine. I do delight in passing on his stories because they are simply good to hear (in this case, read), told with an authentic voice from the Bronx.

Once he angled for sympathy after walking a distance and was tired, so he asked a lady occupying a good portion of a bench to move a bit so he can rest his 8-decade-old body frame on the seat, he said. The lady, no dummy, told him to quit whining, as she needs the space more than he did by size and age. She was much older too, she said. Curious how old the heavyset lady was, he inquired. The lady said she gets around by bus but drives long distances and pulled out a driver’s license to prove it. She was 99 years of age.

After a few exchanges and banter, he turned flippant and bemused, asked if she still “fooled around.” She didn’t miss a beat. “Back it up,” she said, and he understood that he had better put his body where his curiosity was, or shut up. My neighbor did not say how he responded (this was three years ago), but does it really matter?

We’ll let the erotic mind wander without further pander. We had been blue-penciled a couple of times so we won’t invite another.

My 86 projected years of existence is frequently subjected to questions of revision, the most recent being a suggestion that given the state of my health, I should revise my story and start using 96 rather than 86.

I am not sure. Henry and Elizabeth Van Dusen were sickly in their late 70s in the ’70s, and at Union Theological Seminary of NYC, they gave respectability to the practice of euthanasia. While I am not even inclined to commit actual and/or metaphorical self-immolation when I reach 86, I am clear from rapidly deteriorating muscular and nerve endings that I will not be a happy camper for any existential distractions if I lasted that long, except if I ran into a fat lady of 99 who dares me to put my body where my curiosity is, in which case, I might go for 87!

But it is my neighbor and the treasure of his accumulated stories that got my attention, or the fancy of my pen, which I now seldom use since I’ve gotten comfortable with the keyboard. Many folks his age prefer to focus on embellished memories 20 years earlier unable to tell what really transpired in the last 20 hours. My neighbor, even with senior moments, just frankly tells it like it is, 20 years ago, or 20 hours before!

Telling stories is the way we articulate what we know. Marshall McLuhan coined the word “global village” to relay his sense of oneness. He understood that our images are our reality. The flat earth people who claim that NASA engineered the shots on the moon from earth-based laboratories will not be swayed by “facts.” The flatness of the earth is their “fact,” their reality, and unless the image of their reality changes, they will retain their “fact.”

Educators have long known that everyone operates out of images. Images determine behavior. Images can change. A change in image results in a change of behavior. And, of course, for those interested in changing history, when behavior changes, history changes as well. Mathematicians say the same thing with their chaos and relativity theories, but we’ve ploughed that field before.

Pedagogy and exams that solely use words and numbers are unproductive. I am just as guilty as the next pedagogue in being comfortable with words and numbers. We are trained that way, and save for shapes in geometry and equations in algebra, we are blandly prosaic. Still, it’s my neighbor’s stories that delight me, and whether he is intentional in the act of storytelling, and thus, as a consequence, paints images, I cannot tell. Does it matter? The fact remains that images are created and incidences of change occur.

My neighbor assures me that the fat lady has yet to sing even now at 102!