Comedy
It’s refreshing to be able to find a place to rest from a road trip and ease my mind from the perpetual gray asphalt desert that the interstate can be. There was a time in my career when I could hit the road at 3 am and keep moving till I got where I was going, no matter how far the destination, with the exception of bathroom and food stops. But I’m getting older by the minute, and I can’t make my trips as easily without taking a break. No duh, right? Every minute that passes, you’re another minute older, Captain obvious! It’s just that I used to be able to ignore it. I can’t ignore it anymore. I seem to be falling apart - something my younger self was warned about, but I pushed away from my mind because that was in The Future … Well now I’m coming to terms with the reality that my body has its own agenda. It wants to call it quits. It’s my body’s grand scheme to rot like that bag of salad you said you were going to eat, but then threw to the back of the refrigerator and forgot about. That salad got soft. Things turned colors they weren’t intended to turn. There is a smell coming off it that causes you to make a certain kind of stink face and when you finally take it out to throw it away, you exclaim, “That’s OLD!” From Atomic Red Studios in the heart of Granite Country, I’m Michael Blackston, and while some of you might still call me a youngun at the age of 48, I‘m not feeling it anymore. Let’s get acquainted with some of the things that are flashing bright red as a great big warning sign in my Funny Messy Life. _________________________ The first thing a doctor would tell me is that my biggest issue is my diet and exercise habits, or lack thereof. Dear old doc would explain that of course I wake up feeling like Mr. Magoo after he’s been run over by a dump truck hauling a ton of broken wheelchairs and walkers. When a person goes to bed at night after eating a family sized frozen lasagna and three Little Debbie Fudge Rounds, that person will naturally wake up with the sensation that they got too close to the cars of a Tilt-A-Whirl and all of the passengers were contestants on The Biggest Loser. Add to the fact that the last time I engaged in any sort of real, regular exercise, I was unable to grow facial hair, and there’s the answer. I know I haven’t helped my cause over the years, but my body still hates me. And I think that even if I ran five miles a day and ate only tofu and broccoli, the things I’m about to mention would still be going on. Let’s start with my teeth. I’ve mentioned before what a nightmare my smile is. I could be the grinning poster boy for horror movies, but theatres would never allow it because people would be too disgusted after looking at it to buy popcorn. My teeth started crumbling in my twenties and never looked back. For a while, I was able to fix my smile with veneers. Very expensive veneers, I might add. Thanks to my dad, I was able to put off the inevitable for a while, but because my teeth have always been weak, even that decayed after a while, and now the inevitable is at the door. At this writing, I’m eight days from getting dentures. I’m still having trouble with the thought of it. It’s not the extractions of the bad teeth that are left. I can handle that. It’s the fact that I’m having to get DENTURES! At least for right now, it’s only the upper teeth that have let me down. The bottoms are getting crowns. Again, an expensive endeavor. I’ve always been a singer, and that’s what I’m most worried about. I haven’t know anything but singing since I was four or five years old. I recently had an … episode … while I was traveling and had too much time to think while the gray desert loomed ahead of me. I began to think about what life would be like if my new upper plate restricted me from singing or speaking. I love my visual art, but if you asked me which activities mean the most to me, it wil be first leading worship at church, followed by performing on stage. And guess what? DING DING DING! You guessed it! Both of those things involve me using my big ol’ loud mouth. And that’s not to mention the fact that I hope to start a speaking ministry when I get my teeth situated, or that I’d like to continue voice work like this podcast, recording audio books, and doing voice overs. I won’t be able to do any of that as effectively if I sound like I have an enormous, unwieldy, apparatus in my mouth because I have an enormous, unwieldy apparatus in my mouth. So I freely admit that I had … an episode … while driving alone in my truck. As I noodled it through, and imagined myself in front of the congregation at church, sounding like Sylvester the cat, I started to lose it. It sounded something like this: “Noooo, God! No, God, Please no, no! No! NOOOOOOO!!!!” After that I cried a little and pled … pleaded? Pledded? I pledded with God not to make my speech and singing a huge, mushy mess of spit and incoherent babbling. Here’s the good news, and I swear this isn’t a joke. This happened. Immediately after that, I realized I needed to pee, so I pulled onto the next exit and while I sat idle in my car, I felt led to do a search on YouTube for Singing with dentures. And after I fixed the autocorrect, which wanted to help me search for videos about Stinking Wig Dennis, I found a video that lifted my spirits. I think I was pointed there by God. It was by a beautiful young woman who was a singer who wears a full set of dentures, both top and bottom. And they’re not implants. They’re actual dentures. First, I noticed that she’s beautiful and the teeth look great. But then she said so many people who are aware of her dental issues have asked her if it affects her singing, so the whole video was made to set their minds at ease. She sang a few verses from a Christian song I happen to love, and she sounded amazing! She said she had not been affected at all. Now, I realize that’s not the case for everyone, and I fully expect a period of getting used to speaking around mine and during that time, I may very well sound to t he congregation like there’s a Pharisee hiding out in my mouth, purposefully trying to make me unintelligible. But now I have hope. If I’m meant to lead worship, God will make a way for it and I’m content with that. Teeth aren’t my only bane. I have a back that used to be stronger. I could do a hundred sit-ups at one time in my life. However, a few months ago, I decided that I needed to tighten my abs, but I was in a hotel room and had only the floor to aid me. I laid a towel on the floor to act as a barrier between my body and all manner of filth that lives and thrives in the carpet of a hotel room. Not creating a barrier between you and them is asking for trouble. You want a Pharisee in your mouth? Because that’s how you get a Pharisee in your mouth. I prepared myself that since it had been quite a while between now and the last time i did a real sit-up, there might be a hint of resistance. But there wasn’t a hint of resistance. When I tried to perform the sit-up, there was all out maniacal laughter from my back region. Exercise hoity-toities call that your Core. My Core was mean to me. HAHAHAHAHAHA! You thought you were going to get up from this position without being creative, much less perform even one measly sit-up? What were you thinking, my naive friend? How old are we now? Eighty? Feels like we’re eighty if I’m being honest. Dude, you might even have to call for help to get up at all. OOPS! You left your cell phone WAAAAY up over there on the counter at the sink and you got to know that hotel phone is CRAWLING with Pharisees! HAHAHAHA! You’re stuck! HAHAHAHAAAAAA!!! Yeah, I couldn’t do a single sit-up. Since then, I’ve slowly remedied that and my core is a tad stronger, enough that I can do a few sit-ups, but starting a finicky pups mower is a whole different story. I woke up one morning a few weeks ago barely able to walk and I couldn’t figure out what I’d done to my stupid “CORE”. It got better after a few agonizing days, but I did it again a couple of weeks later, and I recognized the pattern. On both occasions, I’d insisted that the push mower would start if I just yanked on the string long and hard enough. Neither time worked, but both times saw me waking up the next morning feeling like the victim of a Grizzly Bear in rut with bad eyesight. I realized where I had made the Faux Pas. And the sight in my right eye is still bad from the attack of the Shingles I endured back in March of 2020. It got into that eye and blurred everything out. I hoped it would clear up after a while, but not so. It’s not as bad by the end of the day, but again, first thing in the morning, I can’t see much at all and that’s not great for someone who makes their living as a visual artist. I’m already nearsighted in the other eye, but for now I can see clearly enough from my one good eye to do my work. Someone asked me to describe the effect from the Shingle Eye. I said it’s like a Grizzly Bear with bad eyesight is in rut and is having an epic battle with a Pharisee in the middle of a snowy field. They kick up all that snow and that’s what I see in the morning. The maladies tally like the list of food items at the world’s largest buffet. Shoulder pain that flares up when thar’s a storm a-comin’. Pale, pigmentless skin that combusts when exposed to the sun and the scars that remain come in the form of cancers. My hearing has been leaving me for some time. You generally have to say everything to me twice. I had a fungus once that left my big toe permanently yellow. I mentioned the teeth, there’s, and the back. Type 2 Diabetus. Tinnitus. Which occurs as occasional ringing in my ears and I’m frequently able to hear my pulse in my head when I’m laying just right. I have a few skin tags. I call them my Love Dangles. My fingers hurt from time to time and I fully expect that will be getting worse. A friend called it a visit from Uncle Arthur. I randomly itch when I’m trying to go to sleep, especially when I start thinking, I hope I don’t randomly itch while I’m trying to go to sleep. There’s a hair that grows from the side of my nose and I have to pluck it. And lately I’ve started using certain words like, Hooligan and Whippersnapper. I’m growing old, and getting old is getting old. It comes with the territory, I know. Lots of people are worse off than me, I know. One day I’ll be in heaven and everything will be perfect, I know. I can’t wait for that. Until then, I’ll try to bite my tongue if the Pharisee in my mouth tries to start any monkey business, and I’ll work hard at being content with where I am in life. As a matter of fact, let’s embrace a better term. Mature. Ha! I’ve never been accused of being mature.