When I grow up…I want to be Betty White. She’s tough as nails yet fully capable of dropping you to your knees in uncontrollable laughter. Her deepest passion is protecting dogs and cats from slaughter while educating the ever changing public on the proper methods of animal treatment.
She refuses to act like a grandmother because labels don’t fit someone who refuses to sit. She’s everywhere! From sitcoms to serious nighttime drama and without hesitation or promotion you’ll quickly see she’s the impeccable draw to the soon to be released Sandra Bullock flick The Proposal.
It’s as if Betty White and Ryan Seacrest have the same managers.
Mom used to say, “Age is only a number…birthday’s are giant bombs dropped on people’s desires to continue exploring. Eventually there’s nothing left to hold.” Nearing 80, she still maintains a full time job while making sure six bowling leagues plus local and state tournaments are properly managed. Those governing the Bowlers Hall of Fame couldn’t keep their eyes clear of tears when she was inducted two years ago. Most of them wouldn’t be there without her dedication and loyalty to a sport that too many see as nothing more than a place to be on Saturday.
Look at Dick Clark! A master at setting aside the numbers game and even after a stroke his willingness to keep moving forward feeds the imaginations of those demanding to be entertained.
We spend our teen years begging the clock to spin faster; we’re tired of school, parents and bedrooms that feel like jail cells. Once free in our twenties, let the party begin. I call it space exploration…a giant mind full of enormous energy without fear and we’re going to do it all inside twenty four hours…then do it all over again tomorrow. Our thirties are spent paying for it, the credit cards, insurance points we racked up speeding, body aches that suddenly appeared one day only to be connected to a party at the beach one late night in May all those unwritten chapters ago. Finally at forty…we’ve had enough of bosses, kids who want more and more and dreams that stand silently to the left side of our nearest touch softly whispering, “We can still make me come true.”
With life beginning at forty, a midlife crisis is like living our terrible two’s again…except without the parents.
I’ll turn forty seven during the cycle of Cancer. I’m not worried about fifty or larger…it’s only a number. One I often remind myself of being when picking up this frame after being tossed to a hard floor in Tae Kwon Do. In the eyes of the teens present, the picture presented isn’t of an old guy fighting to stay young but a sense of determination to exceed the limits of society.
The makers of our culture spend billions of dollars each year reinventing ways to glue the human spirit to the screen of a television set. The only thing HDTV will do is gift Star Trek fans a reason to believe we’re one step closer to Captain Kirk technology. A picture is a picture, sure it looks great but why is the volume on the shows always lower than the commercials and because its digital the clicker has to think ten seconds before it can leap in any direction. Music is no different, be it in mp3 form versus WAV tackling WMA it doesn’t mean anything to the average anybody just wanting to hear their favorite song to sing.
Betty White probably owns an Ipod or mp3 player. She probably Tweets and Facebooks every chance she gets and loves the idea of going green not because it will extend the life of the planet but the generations she’ll never meet.
Betty White probably looks at other countries exploring their options toward building bigger bombs and snarls at the thought of something going horribly wrong, but through it all she doesn’t let its negative energy penetrate the destination. She is Betty White the actress not the professional salesman geared toward protecting the world’s population.
I’ve never seen Betty White angry. She doesn’t need to be…it’s not her position in society. Buddhist Monk Thick Nhat Hahn once wrote, “If you are marching to promote peace…then stop making so much noise and walk in peace.” Most can’t handle the mind body and soul of a walker of peace. Something must be wrong! Drugs! They are modern day hippies! Nobody can be in that much peace!
Ever tried sipping on a positive thought? It comes with no cost and it can change a lot.
This is where you’ll tune out and double click to a different page…too deep for you this one particular day. Some believe you have to be in the mood for peace. I once confronted my Grandma Dobrenz about her soft hums and passion to sit in a living room with no television and stare at the pictures on the wall.
“Are you angry with someone?” I’d ask knowing she lost two sons in the Korean war while living the life of a true American cowgirl, up before the sun, branding, roping, riding, feeding, tending the soil while mending uninvited breaks due to harder rougher economic times.
“How can I be angry?” She’d softly say while wrapping a handmade quilt around my growing shoulders. “I look at every picture and see so much…the events before and the years after that tiny camera click pierced the wind, a single moment creates an incredible playpen…I come here everyday to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Only the calendar changes…not the happy memories.”
She taught me how to tie my shoes.
Grandma Bakken invited me into a world of gardening teaching me to love all living things. Grandma Anthony fell witness to a shattered family’s life and style creating the proper words to say when kids laughed and pointed at the father who didn’t look like me.
Age is only a number…love is everything.
Steal their art….
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
No comments:
Post a Comment