Sixty six pizzas sat on tables outside, smelling like heaven.
A Halloween party when you’re a kid…almost is. The grown folks stood around, a reflection of this remembered in their eyes.
It was good to be there (to DJ and to relive the magic from the sidelines).
This week hasn’t gone so well. “Keep your hand up. Hold the phone. Guard the side of your head” they said, over and over and over. And the only time I stepped into the (informal) ring, I learned the eye-smarting lesson the hard way as the opponents’ fist caught my temple. Ohhh…keep my hand up.
That happened in a way, again, but worse. Sparring with boxing is one thing. This other thing had to work, and it didn’t.
It would ring as hollow as my head did then to opine from the high ground now, to philosophize from the treetops. (Oh, I’m already over it, don’t worry.) Instead, I bring you….
A Few Useful Observations
We all stood in their warehouse, all polyester and business cards and elevator pitches. (Although some folks had Halloween costumes, and I was even more disappointed in myself. ) “Of all times for me to wear a button down shirt” I groused to a buddy at the networking event.
Everyone started with their pitches on a sunny Friday morning. Insurance, Tupperware, financial planning, etc…
The hosts spoke.
“This is our electric company. Our son has muscular dystrophy, and our jobs wouldn’t let us have enough time with the family. So, we started this business, and now we have six employees.”
The applause of the crowd was of that earnest, misty-eyed bravo kind.
They had, and were, doing it: Building something admirable in the face of hardship, and thriving. They hit the wall, and built something about it.
My ears are still ringing from this week’s encounter with a hard limit. It’s easy to whine about “the system” or the unfairness of existence, or, back in my younger days, capitalism.
Maybe it’s just a rueful look at the parking lot after it takes a bite out of your knee in the biking accident.
Absolutes and limits by nature don’t budge. But that’s vital.
Trying to ban a bar to clear means there’s nowhere to jump to, and nothing to do, and instead of things looking up, everything is down.
Is there anything good in a judgement-free zone?
(Taken in a strict manner, there can’t be, because good implies a standard, violating the rules.)
Now I clearly know what to set myself against. With a bit of teeth gnashing and tooth spitting, it’s back to work. I suspect it’ll make me better. It usually does. (And therein lies the genius of the West.)
The second thing: Oh, kids in their costumes. They bring back so many memories, this ritual, not understood, but acted out, channeling the archetype of what a baseball player is (cool, calm, competent). Of a werewolf, a savage beast that is the darkness and the primal force of the howl. The princess, the ninja, the spaceman, Darth Vader, all solemnly joyous, representing what might be, and what will overcome those limits that the electricians beat.
Then they ate eight hundred dollars worth of pizza and danced to every Taylor Swift song I had and scarfed too much candy and got loopy and took trips on the flatbed cart down the parking lot and almost hit my car, and we all laughed, and then they staggered home to pass out in a twitching heap.
The moon floated high above the parking lot and candy wrappers.
Ain’t nothing like Halloween.
The view from my “desk” at the party. Pizza not pictured.