A LITTLE SOMETHING TO REMEMBER YOU BY

My dad had a wheezy sort of laugh, not very soundworthy but delightful and he laughed often, shaking all over.. He was highly amused by my daily "horror"scope which was a broken record of, "Don't scatter your forces." Out of this he would cheerily caution me, "Amass your forces!" "Don't hide your forces under a barrel." Too bad he didn't see Star Wars. He could have added, "May the forces be with you." Over the years, I've noticed I remember people by their catch phrases and whatever music was popular at the time. Since he didn't listen to the hit parade, Toreador from the opera Carmen comes to mind. Naturally, he used the alternative lyrics of, "He wants his shirt. He wants his shirt." Sometimes, the catch phrases aren't even phrases. In my circle of high school friends there was one whose entire conversational input consisted of, "Duh." I nicknamed him The Multilinguist. Another friend liked, "Cute!" She could shade it just-so to denote either sarcasm or gleefulness. I asked her if she had seen The Undead (the original) figuring there was no category she could place it in that was cute. I was wrong! It came under the heading of Chrissie's Silly Wit. I think fondly of Louella who described the man of her dreams in three words--hero, hunk, gorgeous. She never failed to repeat this glowing vision during study hall. I discovered years later that she had married at the age of 52. I was eager to hear if the man was the man of her long ago dreams. The answer came quickly, "No. This one is real."

I wonder if all these shortcuts were a precursor to bites and texting. Did they start with I Like Ike or maybe the New Deal? Would the small-govenment people of the 18th Century fought to save  money on the calligrapher ultimately changing history because the drafters of the Declaration of Independence ended up stating simply, "Free at last"? Pookie & Sebastian went out of business on 3rd Avenue. Was the name too long? The Gap has downsized its logo to something that looks like a highway sign on a drivers' test. Nobody but nobody says, "United Nations." U.N. and U.S. make me think of Unamuno. Thank goodness, he was a man of more words, though definitely not Proust. I was a quiet child, never raised my hand in class. College days transformed me. My language skills were developed by a fellow classmate who responded to everything I said, such as "What's for lunch?" with, "What does that mean?" I felt obligated to explain, rephrase. Voila, a storyteller was born. 

Walking on the streets of the Upper East Side, I am struck by how streamlined people and buildings have become. There aren't the elaborate window surrounds from the talent of a bricklayer/artist such as on the "Landmarks." Does part of being a New Yorker have to do with a The North Face jacket? (Does anyone know that this famous fashion line was designed by a student at Berkeley?)  I'm guessing if one's life is schedule-driven and multitasked to death. this is a good thing. As for me, I plan to go out on my adventures colorfully unhurried. I won't scatter all my forces but you can believe, I will scatter a goodly heap. "See you soon!"