Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Saturday, January 20, 2018

Two Simple Words


Ah, so you’re finally getting married. So sweet. It’s about time. The family is relieved. You are, too.

The fresh breath of Spring floats on the air. The diamond sparkles on your finger and all the future is brimming with delight. The family rejoices. Marital bliss is blooming.

The household buzzes with preparations for June. The flowers, the church, the bridal showers, the dress, the reception, the honeymoon. So much to do, so little time. After all, it must be a perfect affair.

You don’t worry; mom’s in control, barking orders, negotiating prices, tweaking every detail. Where’s dad? Oh, you forgot about him? Poor fellow? Last time you saw him standing was when you and the new groom broke the news.

You’re sort of sorry the way it happened. In retrospect perhaps you should have just dropped a few hints instead of blurting out, “Hey, dad, I’m getting married.” It might have eased the blow somewhat. Besides, you regret having the EMT’s haul him off to the ER on account of his bad heart and your bad timing.

Oh, well, he recovered and even wanted to have some say in the event. After all, you are his only daughter, and surely his role should be bigger than just repeating, “Your mother and I.” Which gives you a little heartburn, hoping, even praying, that he will not flub and forget the four words he has to memorize. Embarrassment at weddings lives long afterward.

You speak to your mother about dad’s role. She breaks up laughing. “Honey, men have no role in weddings except one. And that is to sit down, shut up and shell out. Leave him to me. He’ll be invisible.”

Things roll along well. June gets closer. Except for the times when you’re having second thoughts. The ‘what if’s’ begin to intrude. Some strange things are not adding up. He doesn’t return your urgent calls as quickly as before. Has he had second thoughts? You admit you have.

And then there are his friends. How will you explain them to your family? After all, you know people are judged by their friends. And even worse, how will you explain the fact that the groom has just lost his cushy sales job and is temping at Doggie Delight Grooming Emporium?

And his family. They’ll all be there. How will they be dressed? Why, coming from South Georgia, who knows what they’ll be wearing. Your mother ponders the dilemma and pens up sartorial advice for appropriate wedding attire. You’re mortified at the suggestion, but first impressions are forever, after all.

Then there’s the issue of the bridesmaids. How will you choose, draw straws? Somebody’s feelings are going to be destroyed. You lose sleep, become irritable. You ask your mother. She’s no help, only to tell you which ones she will definitely not approve. The breaking of the news is your job.

The last detail is to have that obligatory sit-down with preacher Bob, the family’s crusty old hard-shell Baptist sermonizer. Straight by the Good Book, no holds barred. You book the appointment; plead with the groom to abstain from beer breath.

The preacher’s office is austere, straight-back chairs and a hard sofa. It sets the tone. The groom fidgets. Preacher Bob begins pre-marriage counseling by telling you about marriage.

He says it’s like life, a gamble with incredible odds. If it were a bet, few would take it. And for those who dare, there are two words they must pledge: “I do.” He says these words are stronger than Samson’s ponytail and are the grit that binds all newly-weds’ feet to the fire. The groom looks ill.

He says ‘I do’ is the ball and chain that forces compliance with the vows: for better or worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love and to cherish till death parts. The groom’s face is pale. He shakes.

He says there’s no wiggle room in ‘I do,’ and if you say it, you own it. There are no splitting hairs with these words. Qualifying prefixes like ‘maybe’ won’t fly. ‘I do’ comes with a warning: “Danger…Think before speaking; Heaven’s listening.”

Finally, it’s over, you assist the trembling groom out while he mumbles ‘I do, I do.’ You’re relieved…he’s memorized his lines, too.

Somehow you pull it off, the wedding happens. The groom shows; Dad comes through; your mother books a long vacation cruise with friends. And so it goes… ‘I do’ wins again.


Bud Hearn
January 20, 2018







Friday, January 19, 2018

See Dick Run


This week I’m busy rummaging through the over-stuffed library in my home. Books everywhere, too many books, books never read, never to be read. Wisdom wasted: so little time. New rule: buy a book, shed a book.

Stuffed third-tier back in the shelves are my ancient high school yearbooks. Inside the 1958 one are some crinkled pages of Fun With Dick and Jane. Remember it? It was written in the 1930’s by Dr. Bill Gray, a man who apparently had some psychic powers.

See Dick Run may be some of the first words many of us read in the first grade. Dick was joined in life by Jane, Spot, Tim, Puff, Mom and Dad. Flipping back through the pages, I believe Dr. Gray used ‘Dick’ in a metaphorical sense for ‘us.’ And if you look at it in this way, it’s a relevant reader today.

I wonder why he chose ‘run’ as the active verb? It could have been seeing Dick sit, hide, seek, eat, talk, walk, shop, etc. I think he was preparing Dick for his life’s journey: running. And if Dick were symbolic of our culture today, he’d be a running fool.

Take a look at Dick’s journey:

See Dick Run: helter-skelter for fun.
See Dick Compete: college, job market.
See Dick Balance: a check book, a career, a family…run faster, Dick.
See Dick Exercise: more running, faster, keep the heart fit.
See Dick Borrow: chasing success.
See Dick Buy: cars, houses, vacations, stuff…buy, buy, buy.
See Dick Panic: not enough, not enough…run, run, run.
See Dick Age: the ‘also-run’ generation.
See Dick Retire: but how, where? He looks, he looks.

Dick’s dog, Spot, ran also, chasing his tail but never catching it. Likewise, so did the Prideful Tigers in Helen Bannerman’s tale of Little Black Sambo, written in 1899. We don’t know what became of Spot. But the Tigers ran so fast in a circle they became a pool of butter and spread on the pancakes Sambo ate. Some stories have happy endings. But somewhere Spot is still running.

Poor Dick. He finds that Time is running, too, and he’s about to run out of it. The world of ‘what-if, not-enough, if-only’ gets in the way of retirement. Everything’s expensive, college vaporized his home equity, Visa maxed out and his 401 (K) has that lean and hungry look.

Dick has been running so long he doesn’t know another lifestyle. In desperation he changes Parties and votes Democrat, where the perennial promise of Redistribution is his last hope. In utter frustration he sighs, “Let our children run for a while; I’m out of gas.”

In the background Jackson Brown is singing on YouTube, “Running on empty, running blind; running into the sun but I’m running behind.” Dick replays the video, glad he’s not alone.

Now, See Dick Quit. He sits with a Bud Lite in the declining rays of a Florida sunset in Garden Hills Retirement Village, reading the obits. The whole miserable episode of running becomes clear in his mind. But it’s too late to do much about it. Remorse sets in.

He commiserates with the other Shuffleboard Unfortunates how the deck was stacked against him. The Biblical Job comes to mind and he sighs, “I should have run faster when I could.” His lament blends with the common liturgical voices of his companions.

See Dick Think. In a life retrospective he wonders, “What kind of ending is this for a man who has run all his life?” He wants his epitaph to be the famous words of Joe Louis: “He can run, but he can’t hide.” Like Dick, Billy Conn lost that heavyweight fight, remember?

Some questions remain unanswered in the Dick and Jane primer, like, “What became of Jane?” We can only speculate. But my guess is that she got pregnant, had a lot of little Dicks and Janes and suffered right along with her husband (or husbands)…cooking, cleaning, washing, nursing, enduring and finally getting a night job at Waffle House. Speculation leads down dark alleys.

We like closure with fairy-tale endings, like, “And they all lived happily ever after.” Dr. Gray allows us to complete the sequels. How would we write our generation’s final version? Somehow I suspect it might not be a book for first graders.

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Keep on running while you can. You may not get there before the rest of us, but it will do wonders for orthopedic surgeons. “Hey Jane, another Bud, please. Thanks.”


Bud Hearn
January 19, 2018

Monday, January 8, 2018

Looking Over Your Shoulder


You might dismiss it as a mere figure of speech, but it’s a fact of life…The Premonition is following us.

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There’s a shadow behind every tree, a menace under every bed at night and a pervading notion that somehow we are guilty of something.

Real or imagined, The Premonition is there. Job knew it, for he lamented, “Man is born into trouble as the sparks fly upward.” It happens. He knew he was guilty of something.

The Premonition has many disguises. It’s a master of deception. It’s raison d’etre is not the tune sung by the band Asriel from their album, Abyss. It’s more closely associated with the Hebrew name Azrael, better known as the Angel of Death.

Philip Pullman’s trilogy, Dark Materials, refers to The Premonition as existing in a parallel universe. He describes it as being a tall and powerful man, fierce in nature and having eyes that glitter with savage laughter. He’s is a mentally stable tweeting genius with a big button and a face that is eerily similar to one D. Triumph.

But this is a dark version of The Premonition. Mostly we experience its presence in nuanced ways. The little distractions of life haunt us. You find yourself walking to the bedroom from the kitchen. You stand there, befuddled, turning in circles asking, “Why am I here?” It’s The Premonition at work.

There’s more. The Premonition stalks me walking down the stairs. It whispers, “What if you fall?” That thought had not entered my mind, but the ‘what if’ starts to bug me. Life is full of ‘what if’ phantoms.

Driving at night spooks me now. The savage eyes of halogen car lights are blinding. With every passing car I envision myself mangled in a tangled wreckage and ravaged mercilessly by rappers who are tokin’, jokin’ and textin’.

Want more? Failure lurks everywhere. Maybe it’s your failed septic tank, or the Comcast devil come to visit; or your identity is stolen, or the phone rings at 2:00 AM. This is all the work of The Premonition.

Last week I lost a month’s worth of sleep because I had received two unclaimed certified letters from the IRS. Now there’s a premonition that bodes badly for anybody receiving those green-labeled envelops. The Premonition can burst all bubbles of smug innocence, believe me.

Last week I begin the purging, the cleanup of leftovers, it now being 2018. One of those hangovers is the cluttered book shelves. The Premonition lives in my home. It whispers subtle hints. Clutter or me, one has to go. Being a self-preservationist, better them than me. Still, it’s sad to sacrifice your lovers so heartlessly to the indiscriminate redistribution by Goodwill.

Last year I read 55 books by Louis Amour, a mere scratching of the surface. He wrote about 120 of these westerns. But the themes were all the same: the good guy gets the girl, the ground and the gold. But throughout he’s looking over his shoulder for the trouble that keeps coming. Sadly, the winnings are temporary. Such is the way of life.

Examples of premonitions abound. You have yours, I have mine. But more than likely they’re mostly negative. Why? Job answers again, “I was afraid of my sorrows. I know I will not be held innocent.”

A vivid imagination will create a host of enemies. And in large part that’s the power of The Premonition. Yesterday was Epiphany Sunday in Methodist Churches. It’s the Wesleyan Covenant Service, a service of Word and Table, Holy Communion.

Prominent on the program is what’s called ‘The Confession.’ Without coming to grips with the guilt that shrouds us, there’s no sense of reconciliation. We have to clean house of the accumulated clutter. Then, after fervent prayers for forgiveness coupled with a Godly portion of bread and wine, we can all head home for fried chicken, new creatures, and fully absolved. Until tomorrow.

Until tomorrow. What a thought to end a day of benediction. Our house is swept clean, garnished, and all demons and premonitions cast out. But then comes tomorrow.

Meanwhile, The Premonition sleeps like a baby, no anxiety, no concerns. Its job is safe. Why? How can it be so cavalier? Simple: Because before we even leave the house we will have been guilty of some infraction, small or large, in word, thought and deed.

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And that, my friends, is a fact of life. Something is following us. Would that for 2018 it be none other than the Shadow of the Holy Ghost.


Bud Hearn
January 7, 2018