By Scott Sullivan
Editor
MyLife
The email from MyLife said “Fix mistakes in yo …” A generous offer. Where do I begin? Yo-, I thought again. Who is “MyLife” and why do they call themselves that?
What shall I pay them to scour databases whereby they, delving into no doubt proprietary info, rate people’s (friends, neighbors, spouses, yours ….) “Reputation” on a scale up to 5?
Who I want dirt on? How low will sleuths go arrive at the bottom line? Where? And why?
If they have that on them, what might they dig up on me? Which will they “fix” among my mistakes and how do they know they are that?
If I click on the full message to find out, will I have sampled the bait so they double down spamming me? Click on attachments till I find out how they’ve rated me, then heed their tactics to correct …?
Screw that.
Tae Kwon Do
I went to the Y, as I can’t let my health slack. Maybe this time I wouldn’t lose the book I take to read while working out on the elliptical, e.g. “Moby Dick” borrowed from the Saugatuck-Douglas District Library. I at least think I lost it there.
After scanning my yet-to-be-also-misplaced ID at the front desk reader, I beheld half a manikin: a fierce-faced, bulldog-necked torso dressed in tae kwon do duds, white robe and black sash bearing high-rank insignia I could win too, perched from waist down on a soft black stool.
Sign up for his class, ages 7-99 accepted, and I too could carry myself secure I’d learned skills, strength and discipline to at last exercise restraint. How, looking in the faux figure’s eyes colored in with a black pen, could I resist?
“Will classes be here?” I asked the desk clerk. “Upstairs in the large, mirrored and matted studio used for yoga, Pilates, Zumba … whatever’s now popular enough to fill it?”
“Depends how many sign up.” she said.
“Or you’ll move mats into the smaller studio? Makes sense to save space, but wouldn’t mirrors on walls help me correct mistakes under Sensei’s guidance?”
“Not when a sensei is a Japanese karate teacher. A tae kwon do instructor in Korean is a sabom.”
“Can I look like him once I cut my legs off?”
“Be someone you can’t be?” she asked. “People try all the time, but it hurts and gets messy. I would have someone else do that.”
Bronze Age
I have long aspired to bring home Olympic gold. New at this year’s Paris Games was Breaking, which seemed made for me. But I had jumped the gun again.
As yo- didn’t necessarily end in “u” — could be -yo also as in yoyo, yo-gurt, Yo-semite … Break led in this case to Dancing.
The first YouTube sample I saw was Canadian b-boy Phil Wizard spinning on his head. Piece of cake in my head, but the catch was everything else: How could I survive baggy outfits b-boys if I don’t work out harder at the Y, maybe read less, that or they’ll fit so I tight I’ll be set to burst?
First, I plotted, I’ll envision, then make it real. When they drape bronze around my neck next to my certified sash, I’ll stand on the lowest podium assured there is no dream for naught, just less.
It and its sister bronze hang today ‘round my rear-view mirror spinning gyroscope-like when I navigate curves towards the Big Lake, the Shining See.
Photo Warmups
Get a grip. Steady self. Look inside. it is there.
Take the middle way.
The End
I parked Saturday in Saugatuck’s Riverside Cemetery to calm down. The mini-golf course lot nearby was packed, cars overflowing onto the street and into gravel two-tracks between the gravestones.
When young growing up here, I remembered imagining, we prepped for the Mini-Golf Olympics pulling out putters from our parked Toyotas, teed up Titlists on tufts of gras, took cuts and, WHACK! launched balls aimed at tiny marble targets 200, 300 yards away; they struck with a THOCK! and of course ricocheted right back.
So I meditated in Riverside after shooting a snagged U.S. flag over B.P. (British Petroleum) pumps outside Dune’s View Kwik Stop with car windows open airing out the carbon, letting in the green.
