How many of you remember 8-track tapes? I use to have some, but I sold them after I got married as I was down-sizing things to move...and I no longer had an 8-track tape player. This week as I was working, one of my clients pulled out 3 case full of 8-tracks, pulled out a tape and inserted into his huge tape player/radio. Songs that speak to me and take me back to a simpler time. Barry Manilow, Glen Cambell, Johnnie Mathis, Crystal Gayle, Lynn Anderson, The Oak Ridge Boys, Crash Craddock, Bobby Vinton, and many more. My client told me that he had maybe a hundred tapes or more.
Listen to those classics, he started reminiscing. He talked of his teenage years. He was known as the crooner. He sang at dances. Sang at his high school prom. He was voted to be most likely to make it to the hit parade. He had a football scholarship to Michigan state. Lost it in the final game of his senior year with the winning touch down. Got his knee messed up. So instead he joined the marines. He was a POW in Viet Nam, he escaped on his own.
His biggest regret, though, was letting the love of his life slip through his fingers. The music brought it all back to him. I could feel his heartache. It makes one realize that he still has all the same feelings and emotions that we all do.
He told me that he would like to jump in his van, roll his windows down, put an 8-track in the tape player, turn it to blasting, and head to Pennsylvania. Not really something you would expect a man of 75 yrs. to say.
As I watched him talk I could see the years melt away. A light shone in his eyes that allowed me to glimps at the real person inside. It was amazing to see.
My friend, Jan, emailed a poem to me that says it so well. I hope she doesn't mind me using it. Thanks Jan.
"When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in Moosomin, Saskatchewan, it was believed that he had nothing left of any value."
Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distrbuted to every nurse in the hospital. One nurse took her copy to Alberta.
The man's sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas editition ot the St. Louis Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based on his simple but eloquent, poem.
And this little old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this 'anonymous' poem winging across the Internet."
Crabby Old Man
What do you see nurses?...
...What do you see?
What are you thinking...
...when you're looking at me?
A crabby old man...not very wise,
Uncertain of habit...
with faraway eyes?
Who dribbles his food....
and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice...
'I do wish you'd try!'
Who seems not to notice...
the things that you do.
And forever is losing...
A sock or a shoe?
Who, resisting or not...
lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding...
...The long day to fill?
Is that what you're thinking?
...Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse
...you're not looking at me.
I'll tell you who I am...
As I sit here so still,
As I do your bidding,
...As I eat at your will.
I'm a small child of ten...
with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters...
Who love one another.
A young boy of sixteen...
with wings on his feet.
Dreaming that soon now...
...a lover he'll meet.
A groom soon at twenty...
...my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows...
that I promise to keep.
At twenty-five, now...
...I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide...
and a secure happy home.
A man of thirty...
My young now grown fast,
bound to each other...
with ties that should last.
At forty, my young sons...
have grown and are gone,
But my woman's beside me,
to see I don't mourn.
At fifty, once more, babies
play 'round my knee,
Again we know children...
My loved one and me.
Dark days are upon me...
my wife is now dead.
I look at the future...
shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing...
young of their own.
And I think of the years...
and the love that I've known.
I'm now an old man...
and nature is cruel.
'Tis jest to make old age...
look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles...
grace and vigor,depart.
There is now a stone...
where I once had a heart
But inside this old carcass...
...a young guy still dwells,
And now and again...
my battered heart swells.
I remember the joys...
I remember the pain.
And I'm loving and living...
life over again
I think of the years, all too few...
gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact...
that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people...
...open and see.
Not a crabby old man...
Look closer...see ME!!!
