Take My Hand...

Recently, I started thinking that you might think I’m strange because of my need to obsessively hyperlink the music that swirls inside my head with my tip-tappingly typed-up bloggerly-written content. If you do, I’d rather you thought of me as Michel Gondry-ish strange, even though, unlike Gondry, who holds nothing back, I hold myself back from all-out exposing you to the full range of debris circulating inside my aging head (like my 62 year-old treasure trove of stranger than fiction book and movie references, as well as 58 years worth of stronger than dirt T.V. shows and commercials).

What I think is strange is that when I listened to Mick Jagger (my favorite after John Lennon when I was in high school in the 60’s) being interviewed the other day on NPR, I was shocked that he sounded like a veddy upper class twit Brit. He’s a good enunciator, as is Bob Dylan when he hosts his radio show on XM/Sirius radio, but I always thought of him as a street-talking kind of guy. When he was asked about the re-release of the Stones’ remastered 1972 album, Exile on Main Street, he must’ve thought it was strange that he had to offer up serious answers to what I thought of as strangely zip-a-dee-doo-dah questions. I have no idea how he managed to keep himself from hooting and hollering after he was asked if he wrote his new lyrics for the new album’s unpublished outtakes the same way he did forty years ago.

I wonder what the interviewer (Renee Montagne) was thinking when she asked this strangely inane question, because who doesn’t write (and think) differently, forty years down the pike (unless they’re stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again)? Jim Morrison was right – people are strange, especially when they’re strangers.

Take my hand, and become a stranger in paradise with me, as forty plus years later I explain how I think differently, now that I’m one month into being a senior citizen. I now think people act strangely in stores, especially when they bump into me, try to pretend they’ve done nothing wrong (even though they have), and then glare at me like I’m strange when I refuse to apologize for their mistakes. The other day I was in Whole Foods, minding my own business, methodically sorting through the sell-dates on all the Fage yogurts so I could snatch up the newest batch. Suddenly, this insane woman smashed her cart into my leg, loudly yelled at me to watch where I was going, then stood there tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for me to apologize. Since I had done nothing to apologize for (I was the one standing still, right?), I refused. Instead of giving her the satisfaction of speaking, I stared straight into her eyes, gritted my teeth (in pain), rubbed my now-bruised leg, and wiggled my nostrils in and out like a rabbit. Strange, but true.

I now think people are stranger, yet, on trains, especially in the newly created quiet car, which didn’t exist when I first started taking Amtrak in 1958. Today they often refuse to be quiet – even after being called out for rude, annoying, inappropriate, uber loud cell phone talking. I love how they pretend to ignore the Ssh! This is The Quiet Car sign, my (and other passengers’) repeated requests to shut up, and often even the conductor when we rat them out (which always makes me feel like I’m complaining to my mom that my younger sister is bothering me). I’m now amazed how people who break the rules act shocked and surprised when they’re being confronted, then look around in wonder at us, their accusers (strangers, all), as if the theme from Twilight Zone was suddenly leaking its way through the train’s loudspeakers, proving that we’re the strange ones, not them.

After practicing yoga for the past 36 years, I more often than not believe that yoga classes have turned into refuges for strange, odd duck acolytes. My favorite yoga class is often invaded by a loud-breather guy whose noises make it impossible for me to keep a straight face as he turns what are usually quiet downward facing dog and warrior posing moments into high comedy. Instead of in-through-the-nostrils, out-through-pursed-lips breaths, he produces loud piggy snorts, gurgling, or deep-voiced groans, making it hard for me to focus on anyone or anything but him. His obvious-to-me strangeness doesn’t seem to bother the others, but unbalances me so much I have to om shanty om up a storm inside my head so I won’t fall off my tree pose and dissolve into hysterical giggles.

I can’t help but feel like a stranger in a strange land these days - maybe because I’m getting older, maybe because I’m not working full time and I have more time to think about strange things (don’t get me started on those Tea Party poopers) – or maybe because my past is butting up against me, laying waste my powers. Never fear - faces aren’t coming out of the rain – but I’m pretty sure something equally bizarre will emerge next on my middle-aged strange-o-meter, proving to me that I am, in fact, not morphing into old and intolerant, but merely experiencing strange days, indeed.