It Is Like Being Back in High School Once Again

Planning to make a change in my life is like being back in high school once again, which for me is not a very good thing. Those were not especially enjoyable years for me. So much of life in those years made me nervous, boys in gym class laughing at my skinny legs and girls generally, especially when they peeked into the boys’ gym and looked and laughed at my legs.  I was glad when I graduated and headed on to university, where I met my eventual wife and got my career started.

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions, and I have never put together a ‘bucket list’. What is in the bucket should stay in a bucket, or just be dumped into a deep hole, I say.

But this year is different somehow. I have been divorced from my former wife for nearly 10 years now, and I feel that I should do something completely different from anything that I have ever done before. I am bored with my life, and I need to change it to something that interests me more. It is time for a desperate measure. What I have decided to add to my life is not going to be easy. it got my heart pumping. The old me would have seen that as a clear sign that I should not be making a change. I would have said to myself, “When the heart speaks you should listen to what it says. It knows your emotions well.”

But I want a new me now. I am not happy with the person I have become since the divorce. So I am going to take a big chance. I have said to myself, “What is the worst that can happen?” I didn’t like the first few answers I came up with in reply, but I still planned to make the change.

All in a Dream

           It’s funny how this crazy idea began. I was dreaming, and saw someone whom I admired when I was a child and had not thought of in decades. I wanted to be like her when I was a kid, and that wish returned to me in the flash of a dream sequence. When I woke up, I thought of how this idea would really surprise my ex-wife Gemma. She used to say, especially in our last few years together, “John, you are so boring, so incredibly boring. And it’s not just because you are an accountant. You would be boring if you were a super hero – which you definitely are not.”

           And to be honest, I knew then that she was right.  At that time I was boring, and have been increasingly so since we split up. Boring is boring a hole in my life. I will not be that way much longer. I just need now to acquire the necessary supplies and invest lots and lots of hard core practice time to add a new dimension to my life.

Working on my Dream

That weekend I began working on the new addition to my life. I watched on You-Tube a few very old television shows that helped me with what I want to do. My heroine seemed just as engaging to me as an adult, as she was when I was a kid.

I called my brother Jack. He had always had more faith in me than most others did, including not just my school mates, but my parents and grandparents as well. I told him what I have been doing in almost all of my spare time over the last two months, and what I would like to do with his acceptance of my plan. He replied with the obvious question of what I want from him, although I suspected that he knew. He agreed with going along with my plan, without a moment’s hesitation. He did not even sound very surprised, although I was sure that he was, and might spread the story to other family members.

           On Tuesday of the next week I was seated on a small stage in front of a class of students, the grade threes that were in my brother’s class. I had told my boss what I was going to do (he did look surprised), and he gave me permission to take the morning off, as long as I worked through the afternoon into the early and maybe the later hours of the night.  

Accompanying me on the stage were two plush puppets in my hand, one I called Mutton Chop (in honour of my heroine Shari Lewis’ Lamp Chop) and the other called Plush Puppy (in honour of her Hush Puppy).

I had been watching you-tube videos of Shari Lewis, with my favourite Lamp Chop the sock puppet, as well as Hush Puppy and Charlie Horse. I believe that if my neighbours heard the programs, they would have wondered why an old man living alone with no grandchildren would be watching such programs.

I feel safe in saying that I was a success with the kids. They were laughing and smiling, and generally having a good time with the show that I was putting on. When my show was over Jack came up to me, shook my hand, and said that he would get more gigs for me at the school.

I noticed at one point that there was a woman standing at the back of the room, watching and evidently enjoying the show. She looked familiar, but I could not remember at first why that was, and who she was. As I was leaving the room following the kids, she was standing beside the exit. Up close I suddenly realized who she was. She was my ex-wife’s younger sister Audrey. She came up towards me and said straight away. “You know that Gemma always said that you were boring. But after seeing your performance today on stage, I have to disagree with her.” After I thanked her for her compliment, saying that I hadn’t been sure of how it would go. She then asked me “What are you doing for lunch?” I put Plush Puppy on my right hand, and said with the voice I used with him, “I was planning on eating.” It was the beginning of a new change in my life, this one not planned, but every bit as good.