A much needed conversation
Days off between gigs are rare in the regional Wedding/Party band business. Those of us that work like this are accustomed to playing two or three shows in a row driving from town to town day after day and then driving back home. Today was a rarity. I had a day off, a nice hotel room, and I was in a city with more than a few restaurants and one grocery store. I had the choice of doing something or staying in and doing nothing. Life is good.
I opted for staying in. After all, this was a new, superb hotel and breakfast was free. Hotels, no matter how nice, get lonely awfully quick and welcome the onset of depression, loneliness, and self-doubt with open arms. After a few hours I found myself succumbing to the darkness of the wandering mind. I like to combat these emotions by finding a cigar shop or a coffee shop to sit, have a drink and/or a cigar and just sit there taking in the surroundings. So, that’s what I did.
As I sat myself down with a cigar and a cup of coffee, I found myself in a lounge chair sitting comfortably and all alone. Not alone like in the hotel but alone like being the only one in a room normally bustling with sports shows and people checking their phones, emails, text messages. The cigar shop is a fine place to go where people, during the middle of the day, can be alone together. Conversations do break out from time to time. Most times it’s initiated just to break the monotony of the mundane fifteen-minute sports news cycle. This time it was very quiet. The television was muted just like the room with the light from outside unable to break through the half pulled down shades. A well dressed gentleman of moderate wealth holding a mixed beverage and a top shelf cigar walked in and sat across the room. We gave an obligatory nod, exchanged pleasantries, and we went back into our own worlds existing in this room of refuge from loneliness.
Now when I say this man well dressed I do not mean he was in evening wear. I mean he was clean. Nice professionally pressed slacks, silky-smooth button up, nice sleeveless sweater, all accented in matching and complimentary colors. His shined dress shoes, elegant gold watch, and chain necklace were the perfect accents to his wardrobe. He wasn’t showy. He was dressed nice in the way only someone who came from nothing and worked their whole damned life to make a better life for themself and their family dresses. There was a prominent church influence in his dress and in his demeanor. He was certainly comfortable in dress clothes in a way only someone who was made to go through adolescence by a parent or grandparent to Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday morning and Sunday evening services can be comfortable in dress clothes. Like I said, the man was clean.
I, too, was at church for all of the meetings any and every day of the week while I was growing up. There was a time when I was more comfortable being well dressed than being in casual clothes. An adulthood of playing bars got that comfort out of me before my mid-twenties. So, anyway, I was sitting there in jeans and a tee shirt with my trusty old grey hoodie, wearing sneakers and my NY ball cap. I looked to be just above homeless, but not like Walmart in PJs and moose slippers homeless. I was more this-is-my-day-off-while-on-the-road kind of homeless. He and I were the only people sitting in the cigar shop. If someone walked in it wouldn’t take that person long to figure who was in the decked out Lexus ES and who was in the base model Tacoma. Differences not withstanding, there we sat in the same room watching a soundless sports show. Then the TV program changed.
In honor of the Ben R. retirement the NFL Network aired a replay of Super Bowl XLIII. (That’s forty-three in Roman numerals. Why does the NFL insist on keeping this format? Heaven knows it is the only Latin the majority of Americans know.) When the game started playing, this gentleman spoke aloud asking if this was a current game. I mentioned that this was the game where Santonio Holmes made that amazing touchdown catch to win the game. He said “that’s right!”
We sat and watched the game for a few minutes when I laughed aloud at a memory. He looked at me puzzled and asked what was funny. I explained that when I was a kid I thought the Iowa Hawkeyes were the Pittsburg Steelers and I was always confused by them playing twice a weekend while no other NFL team had to play twice. He sat there looking at me with a look something just below bewilderment. He held this look for about ten seconds but it felt like an eternity. I was still chuckling softly thinking this poor fellow thinks I am a moron. Suddenly he burst out laughing. He was loud, belly laughing. He laughed for a few seconds and looked at me and said he wasn’t laughing at me, he was laughing with me. He, as a child, thought the same thing and he had never heard another person admit that. We both laughed. We discussed our era of football. He was early Gen X and I am latter Gen X but we had so many life experiences through sports teams in common. Talk of sports turned to talk of life, growing up poor, best food in America, traveling the country and traveling the world. We shared an appreciation and love for so many of the same things. We talked, laughed for over an hour. We joked like we had known each other forever. We were both amazed by our shared prospective and experiences. I don’t mean we were naive to other people having similar experiences. I mean we talked and discovered that his growing up in the inner city of St. Louis and my growing up in rural south Alabama were so similar that one would’ve thought we grew up together. It was refreshing and it was honest.
We entered that cigar lounge total strangers but left that place as friends. We made each other a promise. I made him promise to enjoy his final years as a professor of Engineering at the University but make sure that when he retires he doesn’t wait to go all of the places he wants to go because while Paris will always be there in a few more years, he and his wife my not. He promised to live his life while he still felt capable of living it to the fullest. He made me promise to go to Clarksdale, MS and when I go be sure to visit Morgan Freeman’s and get the hush puppies. He then told me to keep my goal of trying to live up to being as good a human being as is my mother taught us to be because, as he said, “It’s working and I know she is proud of you.”
As I reflect on that unexpected conversation I can not help but be grateful for it. I needed it. I needed to be reminded that we all have way more in common than we have differences. I did not realize how much my soul needed that connection to the real world, the world that exists outside of our electronic devices. I needed to be reminded of the kind of world that isn’t cut off from reality and, instead, is connected by humanity’s differences and it’s uniqueness of culture. I needed the escape from the isolated IG, FB, Tik Tok world dictated by algorithms. I needed to be reminded that two people can disagree and still enjoy a conversation. He and I had different opinions on a few things. Instead of quickly escalating into a screaming, ALL CAPS, unhinged keyboard argument, we politely disagreed and kept going with the conversation. The disagreements actually drove the conversation forward and we both understood each other better. Hell, I honestly don’t even remember what the disagreements were about. I just recall how they led us to more commonality. Sadly, I have allowed myself to forget that this is how human beings actually communicate. Our conversation led us to a friendship. Seriously, can you imagine that in today’s hyper-sensitive, easily offended world two strangers from different parts of the country, different cultural backgrounds, differing political affiliations, and different financial situations can be engaged in a conversation sharing life experiences and ending the conversation with positive encouragement?! I can, I did it. I look forward to sharing another conversation like that again soon. I hope that all of you will do the same.