The Prom

The 2nd most expensive day of your life. Who did you take? Where did you go? How did you ask? Did you dance?

The senior promenade was designed to celebrate the seniors’ achievement and was put on by the Junior class. Decorations to honor the graduates. An opportunity to demonstrate social skills in dining and manners. Opening doors. Introductions. Corsages and small flowers. Suits pressed. Dresses with an extra glitter. Promises of a potential relationship. Limousine drivers. Live band. Excessive decorations Loud music with questionable lyrics. Revealing dresses and expensive make-up and nails. Posters and balloon to lure the potential date. Coercion and storytelling to sway the partner. 

No thanks. I’ll stay home. Yeah. I know it’s my prom but… well, I don’t have the money. I don’t have a date. Not all my friends are going. My car’s not that nice. I gotta work anyway. I could use the ticket money, dress money, tux money, dinner money, gas money elsewhere. Besides, I thought it was celebrating seniors. 

Somehow that got lost. Prom is an expensive dance.

Open mic 

A barnyard of animals. A bus load of junior higher. Men at the bar. What’s the topic? Is it defining the pecking order? Is it a high school prom?

Open mic presents… 

    The comic- hoping the jokes will land well. That timing perfect. That the audience will laugh at the right times and end before the story continues.

    What happened last night. Everyone knows but the audience. How much truth is in that story. The storyteller has the peers in the bus gathered close wanting attention and praise. Will he tear another down or elevate himself? 

    The more they drink, the more elaborate the details. The sadder the circumstances and more sobering is necessary. Work is horrible. Wives are blabbermouths and spendthrifts. The car repair guy is ripping you off and the world - well the world, politics, etc. You know. 

    Topics? A catch phrase. A hook. Every good story teller needs to hook their audience. Why, didn’t your curiosity peak when reading this title? 

    Open mic. The barnyard animals. Roosters strutting. Hens looking for something to cluck about. The pig, content to leave things as they are. Random birds gathering and leaving. The farmer comes and tries to make the best of it all. Organizes. 

    But what is the open mic really? An exhale of the day, the week? A chance to say something without fear that needs said. Said in a subtle message that authors and writers catch. The mic is too short, too tall, too soft, there’s feedback. The speaker is disheveled and loses their power. Audience grabs their drink or takes another bite. Waitresses interrupt the concentration. 

Drop the mic.

 A train is a Time Machine. 

That is if you ever rode one before. The windows flash images past your eyes, you struggle to grasp each one. If it’s far enough away, you might have time to reminisce. Reflect, even cry or smile. I took my first train ride to my grandfather’s funeral in Iowa. The conductor stopped the train at my Uncle’s home where Grandpa had lived. That’s about all I remember. My dad said he’d hopped a train. If only it were a Time Machine. If only I could go back and watch. Visit. See with adult eyes what I missed as a kid. I’d cry.

 Where did Mr. Woodard go?

After nearly a year into retirement the questions still come up?

I’m not gone. I’m learning who Lloyd is. I’m the silent partner of a social butterfly. The dad that can stop what I’m doing and assist. The granddad that has some ideas that are fun at times. 

Where did I go? Well. I go. The same as always. I read I shop. I still go out to eat. I travel a little. 

“Every day is Saturday and every night is Friday night.” Maybe that why I’m missing. My routine has changed. My ideas are all lesson plans and grading. I lived an exciting 49 years as an educator. I’ve lived an exciting 72 years as me. Me has not really changed- jurist transformed. My superpowers are being refocused. I’m still around, just not in charge. I come alive when you find me in the store or call my name. I’m learning to be a man after God’s heart. That’s tough. I am being broken, melted, refined, and purged for usage. Cast into a mold not of my choosing. Having the mold marks ground off. Burnishing and looking for imperfections that need attention. I wonder how God can use an imperfect casting. But He does. He doesn’t wait for me to be perfect to be used. Sometimes my flaws show when He fills and I need repaired. He does. 

Where did Mr. Woodard go? He’s still around. I don’t hide well.. Fortunately He can use Lloyd as He has Mr. Woodard.

 When I step outside I wonder.

The blank canvas. The empty room. Sometimes I reflect on my life, sometimes I merely live it. My paintings, sketches etc fill in the void. I hold them like treasures. Why do I create? Am I a hunter wishing to bag a moment in time? Is the scene worth capturing and displaying like a trophy? Who is my audience? Do I create for them or for myself? 

Do I desire praise? Am I hungry for acceptance? Am I willing to have my work only to be sung praises because it’s mine? Is my friendship the rubric? How did great artists do it? Was it there popularity or were they merely patron-pleasers? 

Does the extra time I now enjoy create a sense of something missing? Who am I now…

 Lost among the creatives.

What’s in the mind of the writer? Is it the hypersensitivity to the surroundings? Listening to random conversations when in a crowd that forms a story? Do writers see compositions like artists do? Make connections like I draw lines or blend colors? What brings them together? Hope? The aching desire to be noticed? Published? Heard? What’s inside of them that creates that longing or is it just another self pushing desperately to be noticed? 

How do we crack open the chrysalis? Or do we let them bust it themselves? If we help will they be lame? Is the reader the mother bird that pushes them out of the next when they’re unknowingly ready to fly?

Social butterflies. Owls in a restaurant. They never want to miss a moment. Seize the day and herald their story which is really one they pieced together from bad grammar and experiences. Perhaps hopes and dreams need trumpeted. Blast your story from the rooftops. Help us see ourselves from another’s eyes. Is our world really that bad? Is our love lacking more? Are we in desperate need or should we celebrate another’s triumph and take on their personality as we follow the script.

Writers set the stage for readers to become actors in the story. They show us what’s going on that perhaps we’re missing. Are all stories messages? Call to action? When the book is done to we breathe a sigh of relief or do we look for more?