LIVING IN YOUR OWN STORY [T, 5-6-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—LIVING IN YOUR OWN STORY [T, 5-6-24]

 

There is a street sign I pass regularly that proclaims “Arden.” Makes me think of Eve Arden. Makes me think of “Anatomy of a Murder,” in which Eve played defense attorney Jimmy Stewart’s secretary. Makes me think that I am there in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where Jimmy defended Lee Remick’s boyfriend, contemporaries with Jimmy and Eve. Except they were 51 years old then, and I was 51 almost 40 years ago.

When you’re my age, there aren’t many current stories where you can imagine being part of the adventures and banter. Would Sheldon and Leonard want me hanging around? Not likely. Even the curmudgeonly old men in TV shows and movies are the age of my children, not my age!

When I was young, I often imagined myself as a character in a story. Usually as observer but sometimes as a participant.

I think it’s because of radio, specifically The Lone Ranger on radio. Listening to a radio drama, you have to supply the pictures from your own brain. As the masked hero and his faithful friend rode out of the radio speaker in our living room, it was not a long reach to start riding along with them. I probably named my horse Aluminum, since that’s a very cheap version of Silver.

As a kid, you make up your own hero stories. You are the one who makes the winning shot in the NCAA playoffs in your own driveway. Or you stand in the back of the auditorium and see yourself singing on stage. Of course, now those dreams are of hitting it big on Fan Duel. 

As I grew into teen years, my participation in the fictional stories of others became greater. I was the reporter who got “The Big Story.” I was one of the college students joined in singing about “The Halls of Ivy.”

With Bible stories, I was just a listener, until I made a deal with God to be a preacher. Then, as I read the Gospels, I wondered what it was like to follow Jesus around. That, of course, was encouraged by songs like “Were You There?”

I really got into the Jonah story when I was trying to escape that deal. Jonah was trying to get away from a deal with God, and so was I. It wasn’t hard to imagine myself sitting under a gourd plant, hoping God wouldn’t notice me. Of course, God did, and appointed a worm to cut the plant down, just like with Jonah.

But then I got so busy living in my own story that I did not have time to imagine being in others.

In more recent years I’ve had less story of my own and so have started being in other stories again

In particular, I have sat in the corner of The Drovers Arms and observed the characters in “All Creatures Great and Small,” as I pastored the Methodist chapel in East London in “Call the Midwife,” where I have made friends with the Nonnatus House nuns. It’s not a difficult imagining, because London’s Poplar in the 1950-60s is very similar to Chicago’s Pilsen, where I was a social worker and preacher in 1958.

Now I’m at an age where there are no stories because none of the story writers are as old as I am. Writers imagine that old people are either horny or foolish, which says more about the writers than it does about old people, because the writers, through no fault of their young lives, have no way to imagine what the life of old people is like.

It is okay to imagine being in other stories. That’s what dreams and ambitions are, kids in the driveway shooting the winning basket at March Madness, or standing in the back of the music hall and imagining being on stage

But when you’re old, more than any other time, I think, we have to live within our own stories. It’s not a bad place to live.

John Robert McFarland