Well, really yesterday.  Internet problems kept me from posting in a timely manner, but October 20 was my birthday.

Celebrations were subdued, but lasted two days. When your birthday falls in the middle of a work week, there are calls, cards, and voice mail messages from kids and grands and lots of FaceBook greetings from ‘friends’ far and wide. Staff members at work brought cake today, since they were at an out-of-town meeting yesterday.  I got the song twice.

Some observations about my life so far:

It doesn’t bother me for people to know my age as long as they don’t categorize me because of it.

I’m not planning to grow old gracefully. When the time comes, my children will have to knock me in the head and pry my car keys out of my fist.

Since becoming a senior citizen I have: retired and gone back to work, relocated to another state, bought a house, become a Certified Lay Speaker in the United Methodist Church, adopted a son, had two books published, appeared in 12 plays at Center on the Square.

I had two long marriages. One ended by divorce and one by death. Neither ending was less painful than the other.

Two things I wish I had done (and now it’s too late): Become a social worker, learn to play the piano well.

If I had my life to live over, I definitely would.

Yesterday at the UMY (United Methodist Youth) yard sale, I spotted a piece of wood carved in the shape of a pistol. On the butt of the gun was fastened a clothes pin, the type with a spring, so that when one squeezed the ‘trigger’ one also applied pressure on the  wooden pin attached to the handle.  I knew what sort of toy this was, so I bought it to take home to show my youngest son.  I wondered if he knew what it was, but when he saw it, he said, “Oh a rubber band gun.”

When I was a child most boys had one of these (girls didn’t) – larger, probably made from a 2×4 piece of wood. We called them ‘rubber guns’ because the projectiles they fired were made from sliced inner tubes and when they struck their mark they left a whelp as thick as your finger. Both my brothers had this particular weapon, as I remember, and though Mother admonished them to not point it at people … well … how do you think I know about the wound it left?

Having been the victim, I wanted to be the victimizer. So one day I found one of the unattended guns and attempted to load it. I had seen my brothers hook the piece of rubber on the barrel, pulling it out the length of the wood until it was held in place tightly with the clothes pin.  I tried this, but because the strip of inner tube needed to stretch about twice as far as it was ever meant to, it wasn’t as easy as it looked. The rubber slipped off the end of the gun and slapped me on the side of my face. When Mother noticed the red mark, this caused some questions and brought the pronouncement that I could have put my eye out.

I suppose this is the basis of my lack of interest, avoidance really, of any sort of weaponry. I don’t want to put meaning to the words, “This will hurt me more than it does you.”

Across the USA, virtually every city sitting on a river enjoys some sort of River Celebration.  The first I remember attending was the HemisFair, in San Antonio, Texas in 1968.  They had cleaned and spiffed up the banks of the river that runs through town, built a huge tower (Tower of the Americas) and put up hundreds of exhibits, because this was after all, not a State Exposition, but rather an international one.  I don’t know if this was the beginning of the River celebrations, but it does seem that after that, cities with rivers running through began to take advantage of that natural attraction.  Nashville, Chattanooga, Little Rock, and several others have, during the past 20 years or so, begun to hold their own version of Riverfest.

And so it was that last weekend I took myself to Riverfest in Clarksville, Tennessee, to hear my grandson Stephen’s band play in one of the venues.  Clarksville sits just north of Nashville on the Cumberland River.  It’s a sprawling college town, home of Austin Peay University.  My granddaughter, Stephen’s sister, lives in Clarksville and other family members and friends met there to have a weekend together and visit Riverfest. And so, we gathered with in the Saturday night crowd to hear the “Technikillers.” (Actually, the Technikillers are well known and appreciated around middle Tennessee, staying busy most weekends.)

This band plays what is called ‘experimental’ music. I have to admit that often I didn’t understand what they were doing, but I could fully appreciate the talent it took to do it.  Stephen and his partner, Rusty, have been playing together for over ten years. This was evident when I watched them as they ‘experimented’ in key/rhythm/mode. Suddenly, they make eye contact and move together to the next. While sometimes their music sounded all over the place to me, I could see/hear that they were together. That is really amazing when fingers, guitar picks and drumsticks are moving quite rapidly.

Sometimes it’s a challenge to appreciate what we don’t understand. It’s much easier to toss it out as unworthy of our time. Whatever. That’s my grandson up there and I’m proud of him.  

It was a great weekend.