Happy Birthday, Sarge!
Sarge! I hope you’ll have many more.
I just want to take a moment to point out some things that I appreciate about you.
First, I appreciate your wit and wisdom. I love finding your stories and anecdotes sprinkled throughout the atheosphere. They are always appropriate and they often tie together several disparate ideas from other commenters into a coherent set of thoughts. They’re also funny.
Second, I appreciate your courage and honesty. I admire the integrity with which you are facing your illnesses. You are honest about what you are going through, and you are brave in facing the various issues life brings your way. You have set an example that I hope I will be able to emulate, should I ever have to do so.
Third, I appreciate your perspective on life. You have shown me what it means to embrace life without superstition and to help fellow human beings along life’s way. Thanks to you, I know that a life without religious dogma need not be a life of selfishness, joylessness and aimlessness. You have taught me that it is honorable to care for fellow human beings simply because they are my fellows; you have taught me that, even in the midst of personal suffering, one can fully enjoy family, friends and life’s simple pleasures; and you have taught me that learning, and continually refining one’s values and purposes are noble tasks that are worth pursuing throughout life.
Thank you for being you. Have a very happy birthday.
– the chaplain
Posted by Sarge on December 25, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Thank you very much for those wonderfully kind words.
I’m just a guy, like most others, and I figure if you take your experience and look at it, along with others experiences, you might learn something. A lot of people don’t seem to, they are like gesse, every morning is a brand new world.
If you were an outsider because of your life style, have a bit of synesthesia, and are dyslexic you get a real appreciation of the realities of life as she was back in the 50’s and 60’s.
If your face, as mine did for about three years, would get you a job as a gargoyle at any gothic cathedral in the world, you better really know yourself. And I’ve been lucky.
Have you noticed how often the people who hold out a hand to you and help you are usually people who you would least expect to and they do it even if it costs them?
Had a great birthday (or Sargemass as The Exterminator has dubbed it)but yesterday was … not good. Had freezing rain and wind which blew a good portion of my garage roof off and actually caused most of my chimney to collapse. I played my two gigs on the harp, came back home. Streets were icy, it’s putting down freezing rain, and windy. We live on quite a hill and it was slippery, I got the harp out of the truck and almost made it to the porch and the wind got me, I slipped, went down, managed to break the harp’s fall, scared my wife half to death. Told her to stay in the truck, I could get up. I was laying in an icy puddle with more water was cascading over me. I’m also wearing my tuxedo (work clothes). Managed to get to the porch and into the house, harp wasn’t damaged or too wet. Got it taken care of, my wife got the car garaged and came in to see if I was OK. She said she was scared to death, seeing me laying half in the street with water cascading over me like a big rock. I told her that it was the first time in years that I’d been … RAPID! She folded her arms, narrowed an eye, and pursed her lips. Said she could see I was juuuuuust fine. And she snorted. SNORTED, I tell you!
Today was good. Spent all day at a Hispanic baptist church in our town. They had an all day affair and celebration and our mariachi band went and played. Well, two of our members go there, so it was a foregone thing. These people are from all over Mexico, Central, and South America, and all their traditions were honored. Since it was my birthday, they’d baked me a big cake and let me have a go at a special pinata. Guy with poor balance gets blindfolded, spun around, and is told to wave a stick about. Even I could see that this might promise badly, but disaster was avoided…somehow. Even us non-Hispanics were welcomed there and honored as guests.
But, I was tasked with doing something that I hadn’t done in decades. I was approached and asked to be Santa Claus and dole out the presents to the younger kids. I tried to beg off.
I played the Ethnic Card, wouldn’t it be better if the kids had a Hispanic Santa? Nope, all the kids knew that Santa was an Anglo, so a Hispanic one wouldn’t fly. I tried to counter that actually, he was Bishop of Myra, in Turkey, and they kind of LOOKED Hispanic in that corner of the world, but nope yet again, they’d all been to SEE Santa at the mall, and they had a picture of what he looked like…and as most of them were of Indio stock, that wasn’t gonna cut it, either. Also, the suit came closest to fitting me, I had the requisite jelly like proturbance mentioned in the poem, and also, no beard had come with the costume and I had a natural one, well, corn starch would get things as they should be, so how about it? My wife and other friends are behind me humming, “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch”, and I was going to do it anyway, so I suited up and saved time. It was great. Just great.
So, I had a great birthday, met some fine folks, and dined quite well. Come Uesday at Weight Watchers I’m gonna have some ’splainin’ to do.
Thanks again for thos kind thoughts, they mean a lot.
Posted by yunshui on December 29, 2008 at 8:06 am
I second Chappy’s sentiments. Sarge, your anecdotes are invariably the highlight of many a comment thread, by turns hilarious, poignant and thought-provoking.
I propose the introduction of an annual Sargemas celebration, to replace that winter festival which religious folk seem to get so het up about round this time of year.