Trading Places with the Mailman

Today’s asking is: share “a picture of a person you'd love to trade places with for a day.” To choose someone that I’d like to become is a completely loaded question and difficult to answer. What criteria make up the reason to trade places with someone else? What are the important things that I’d have to consider when making my choice?

For the most part I really love my life and was never one to subscribe to the ‘walk in someone else’s shoes’ theory on life. Sorry, but while I can appreciate the place someone else is in I don’t need to feel it myself to understand it. After all, I don’t really know what size feet they have and frankly, I don’t like wearing uncomfortable shoes so they can keep theirs and I’ll keep mine, thanks.

But of course I do get the symbolism in the request so I’ll try to imagine what it would be like to live as someone else for a day.

Clearly we’re talking about a living person because I don’t think I’d be comfortable finding out what’s in store for the afterlife, ya know? Otherwise I’d totally be picking Rosa Parks. Not that she was the first woman, let alone black woman, to stand up for basic human rights but in the catalogue of the people I’ve felt are most influential to the shaping of this nation’s history she is way at the top of my list. That woman rocked. Her simple act of defiance in the face of oppression sparked a movement that forever changed the nation.

After ruling out those who have passed on to the spirit world, for a second, I considered picking Tristan Prettyman because my more self-serving shallow side thought ‘well hell yeah that means I can jump into bed with someone on my top 5 celebrity list, woo hoo!’ but then it hit me that he’s got this line in a song “so what if a two-pump chump can’t last?” and, yeah, I don’t think I'd want to find out if its true or not. Let’s leave the fantasy world a fantasy shall we?

Then I considered how awesome it would be to experience what its like to be one of the most powerful and richest men in the world for a day -- Donald Trump, Bill Gates or Yuri Milner. What would I do with all that cha-ching for twenty four whole hours? I’ll tell you what I’d do, something with my hair. Sorry guys, but no.

The other more humanitarian side then came bubbling up, and I wondered what it might be like to live for a day as a starving orphan with no opportunities available to make a better life. This really caused a couple tears to well in my eyes. I was forced to face the fact that I fully admit to being a selfish and over indulged American. Forgive me for that, but I just couldn’t do it.

Speaking of things I really couldn’t do, I couldn’t handle raising any kids, being in prison, cleaning up any bodily fluids or being an idiot.

So to recap, I’ll need to pick:
• A living person,
• Who isn’t having sex with a big time celebrity,
• That has good hair,
• With food to eat and clean water to drink,
• No kids,
• Living in the free, and puke free, world,
• As a fairly educated, logical human.

A tall order to be sure so the only obvious choice is Mike Bradecich.

Admittedly I can’t find any information whether he has kids or not but he sure has the best gig going. Everyone knows those USPS “If it fits, it ships” commercials so they know his face even if they don’t know his name, he’s a college grad and skilled at Improv, so he’s obviously funny and that’s just a nice side bonus. As a consistently working actor I imagine that affords him the luxury of food to eat and water to drink. I suppose I can’t speak for the swabbing of decks but if he doesn’t have any kids then I imagine I'm in the clear.

Not to mention, he’s got really good hair.

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Another Impossible Request?

A picture of your favorite memory. That’s today’s photographic request. Holy crap really? I mean, kind of like yesterday, how in the hell will I narrow down close to 14,000 days worth of memories into just one photo? Too bad I don’t have a montage!

Because I don’t have a montage of memories in picture format I’m going a little outside the box again on this one.

Let’s break it down Barry Manilow style.

Back when I was about 22 years old I was the Assistant Manager of a record store. For those of you who are too young to remember record stores they were places where you actually had to drive to and purchased a physical copy of a piece of vinyl, a cassette tape or CD. Don’t even get me started on 8 track tapes…

But I digress, as usual.

While working at that store I was fortunate enough to be the operator of a Ticketmaster machine because we were an authorized purveyor of concert tickets in the area. Generally when tickets went on sale there was a line of about 6 guys outside. I got to know them well because it was the same scalpers lined up for every ticket sale date.

When I heard Barry Manilow was playing at (it was then called) Great Woods, I called my sister immediately and suggested we do the tickets for my mom for Mother’s Day. Wendy was all for it. The only stipulation, I told her, was that I had to provide for the line before I could get my own so they might not be the best seats on earth. We both agreed it was no biggie seeing as though it was still Barry.

My mom had been in love with Barry Manilow since about the second his first record hit the scene. I’m not sure I was even born yet when he started releasing music. At any rate, growing up in a Barry house meant lots of Saturday afternoons acting out the scenes from “Copacabana”, shedding tears as he crescendos during “Even Now” and getting reflective every time “Weekend in New England” plays. He was everywhere back then too; you didn’t even need to have a tape deck in the car because his songs were plastered on the radio. Mom knew all the words to every song.

It was the perfect gift.

Because Wendy was already living in Arizona at the time it was just going to be me and mum at the show. I knew that getting two tickets closer to the stage would be easier than three. The morning arrived when tickets went on sale and I made sure to schedule myself as opening the store. Being a manager had its perks sometimes.

I got everything ready, turned on all the machines and waited for the clock to strike 9:00 AM so I could open the doors and release the 30+ tickets the scalpers were sure to buy.

But then a funny thing happened. There was no line. It was one minute to 9:00 and none of the usual guys were outside. No one was outside. I had the machine all to myself. The first available tickets were mine!

At the dot of 9:00 I hit whatever button it was you had to click back in those days. My tickets printed. Sixth row, stage right. Oh. My. GOD!

She was thrilled of course and weeks later we took off for the concert. He did all the classics, all the songs we both knew by heart and damn it if that man could put on a show! His piano was set up right in front of our side of the stage and I think mum and I both squeed like little girls before either of us knew what squee even meant.

But back then you weren’t allowed to bring a camera to most shows. Back then they actually searched bags and confiscated stuff like that so I had to leave the camera at home. So what’s the memory part of the picture today?

There is nothing creepier to a 22 year old than a multitude of 60+ year old women flinging their bras onto a stage (at a man who probably couldn’t care less that you’re currently going girl-commando).

So as my little tribute to the memory of that experience, here’s the lyrics to…

Memory
By Barry Manilow

Midnight
Not a sound from the pavement
Has the moon lost her memory
She is smiling alone
In the lamplight the withered leaves collect at my feet
And the wind begins to moan
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
It was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again
Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life
And I mustn't give in
When the dawn comes tonight will be a memory too
And the new day will begin
Burnt out ends of smokey days
The stale cold smell of morning
The streetlamp dies
Another night is over
Another day is dawning
Touch me
It's so easy to leave me
All alone with the memory
Of my day in the sun
If you touch me you'll understand what happiness is
Look a new day has begun
Memory
All alone in the moonlight
I can smile at the old days
It was beautiful then
I remember the time I knew what happiness was
Let the memory live again

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All You Need Is a Light Jacket

Some of you will recognize the reference in the title, and those who do will understand that although I’m not specifically picking April 25th as my day four selection, I am trying to think outside the confines of how it reads. Because, like I thought when reading the list initially and Bridgete said yesterday, how on earth could I pick just one?

Today’s photographic selection is:
A picture of your favorite night

So am I really supposed to look back over time and pick a night, just one, that was the most amazing and significant night of my life? If so how could I honestly rate one above the other?

My wedding was pretty fracking awesome.
• But was it really better than the night I got to celebrate (miraculously) graduating from high school?
• The first night I spent, born, on this planet?
• The first time I had sex?
• A random Sunday on a road trip while laughing hysterically?
• That night I got the ‘all clear’ call from my BFF about the C word?
• The time when I was fortunate enough to be invited on a free trip to Disney and got to go on some of the park’s most awesome rides after dark, with just our group and no one else, then ate a catered and served fancy dinner inside the ride?
• The party at my very first apartment?
• The one and only time I made alternate for the gymnastics League Meet?
• When I saw Jason Mraz with no more than 100 people in NYC, he was still a “nobody”, and I was about 20 feet from the stage when someone yelled at him “have my Asian baby” and despite his obvious end of tour exhaustion he laughed out loud?
• Any of the 3rd of July’s in Humarock?
• The one and only time I ever bet on sports and won $1000?
• The first time I was ever put 'on the list' at the door of a club?
• The night I let my friend’s now ex do up my bleach blonde hair in the most insanely freaky style ever then went out to dance in Raleigh (stone cold sober because I was the DD) and took home an Army brat that I didn’t sleep with?
• The time I saw Joey McIntyre at the Hatch Shell, wrote about the show, pitched it to a local radio station and was subsequently published for the first time?
• Every single night because Matt and I cuddle up and snuggle before falling asleep?
• When I won tickets on the radio to go see Bryan Adams back in the 80’s and my sister and I had my dad take us to Worcester where just the two of us got to see the show from like the second row of the first balcony?
• My grampa Ed’s funeral after party? (No judgment people, we’re Irish so the funeral party is almost as big a celebration of life as a birth, wedding, random Tuesday…)
• The night we were the only Americans in a semi-secret club in Amsterdam because I happened to tip the girl serving me coffee and simply asked where was cool to go dance?
• The first time Matt asked me out (and then I made him wait approximately 1000 more nights before saying yes) when he carried me on his back out of the club (sober) and we realized we had way too much in common as we stayed up almost all night talking over coffee at Bickford’s in Woburn?
• Every single night of my almost 38 years on this planet?

Whew, that’s a tall order!

So I’m not going to pick a night from my past, I’m not going to pick a night of the week either. Instead I’m just going to pick my favorite Night -- "Starry Night" by my all time favorite painter Vincent van Gogh.

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