My wife and I sat across from each other at Sombrero’s in
South Weymouth, the new Mexican restaurant that is taking the place of the old Mexican restaurant - La Paloma (for
those of you who are old enough to remember).
My educated guess tells me that if you are reading this or any other
newspaper, you are old enough to remember La Paloma and for that matter you
might be old enough to vividly remember the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. My wife suggested that we enroll our 2
year-old yellow labrador retriever in doggie
daycare. I responded with an
emphatic no way, then was overtaken
by a sinking feeling in my lower back (that’s actually where I get it) that
this subject would probably come up at least five more times before I was able
to finish the new restaurant’s “signature” dish. I was right.
She brought it up again, and my lower back began to scream for a
chiropractor. The fifth time the subject
came up, I decidedly responded that I did not want to leave our dog with
strangers during the day, that our dog was probably very happy to have the
alone time that she actually has during the day (I wish I was the dog), and
that I simply didn’t believe in three things:
doggie daycare, dog groomers that groom any breed of dog aside from a
poodle, and the fact that we pay housekeepers to clean our home every other
Friday. Of course, this led to one of
those passive aggressive moments when each member of the relationship feels
like they are involved in an argument when they are actually not, but it is
still disheartening because you feel like you are, even though it was a
discussion that one of the parties (in this case, me) resisted getting into in
the first place. We both avoided
eye-contact and focused on randomly positioned televisions for what seemed like
an eternity. I lost a staring contest to
a televised visual of Donald Trump, and then refocused on my wife across the
table (which to say I prefer would be a vast understatement). This is when the most interesting part (at
least to me) of the conversation happened.
My wife accused me of having pushed the issue. Pushed the issue? From the specific pronouncement of the words doggie daycare, I had wished that I
could have somehow morphed into Cher and turned
back time. It did force me to look
deep inside myself, however. Could I
have possibly been pushing the issue with her during a discussion that I did
not want to be having and, more importantly, does my wife not realize that I
actually know everything? I introspectively thought back on past
situations I have had in my life during which I might have done a similar thing
until (channeling my inner beagle) I became
conveniently distracted by the rest of the food in front of me. With priorities now clearly in focus, the
only thing left for me to do was to reach for another tortilla and eat. Then with a bit of dinner-induced
communicative tact, I strategically ended the disagreement by using reason
(highly uncommon for the ardent male – just ask my wife) suggesting that I
leave our dog with her original breeder in Marshfield Hills on my way to work
each day for doggie daycare instead, a woman who has already volunteered to
babysit in a time of need where our dog could even reunite with her actual
mother, grandmother, brothers and sisters (all of whom are actual dogs) – and
it would be free! End of conversation,
at least until next time (and with these discussions there is always a next time). The point here is that I can sometimes be opinionated,
even in situations when I am trying to desperately avoid it - which leads us to
the subject of this column. Why should
“Gillespie” be afforded an entire column with which to express his perception
of the world? Well, it’s because I have
an interesting outlook on the changing world around us and the uncanny ability
to reflect it (at least according to me).
The newspaper industry has ironically been somewhat of a
constant in my life, from delivering and reading papers to writing stories,
first for the East Bridgewater Citizen (think Crabapple Cove for you M.A.S.H.
fans out there) as a teenager where I was, in retrospect, a little thin-skinned
in response to the public outcry I received from readers who did not like my
use of the phrase “come from ahead loss” in a sports column. Later I found a job at the Brockton
Enterprise sorting papers coming off the presses at break-neck speed and
distributing them in piles of 25 to a very close-knit team of chain-smoking
women whose responsibility was to place circulars in each newspaper, the kind
of circulars that you wish you didn’t have to deal with when you bought the
paper unless, of course, you really needed them and then they wouldn’t be
there. One of my favorite parts of the
job at the Enterprise was the sandwich machine that was up in their employee
lounge. How could such a delicious
chicken salad sandwich come out of a machine?
Those were the days of opening eyes, figuring out life, and learning how
to score quality lunch from a machine.
Oh, to be young again. My one
regret about the job is that I never tried the tuna.
At age 19, I walked into the Chicago Sun-Times (yes- the one
in Chicago) assuming I could simply remove the pen from my shirt pocket and
write myself into a job in journalism. I
had always believed that I would one day be reporter Ernie Souchak, John Belushi’s
character in his final film, Continental
Divide. Instead, the Sun-Times
became just another place in a large city where I effectively used the men’s
room and left the building, somewhat shocked by the experience of being there
but knowing that if I was ever in the neighborhood again and had to find a
bathroom I would know exactly where to go.
By the 1990s, I was in Boston’s North End writing for a
newspaper so old that Paul Revere was once a loyal subscriber. I did several investigative stories about the
progress of the Big Dig. I was
eventually invited down into the project itself by one of the project’s community
liaisons with the intent being that I would write a promotional piece on how
sensitive the contracting company had been to the needs of the North End
community. These were the same public
relations people who had initiated the project by explaining to residents that
the trees (from 1982) at Columbus Park were “past the point of maturity” and
had to be removed. Their clever skill of
coming up with the right promotional words to say was all but lost when someone
asked, “What about the trees in the Public Garden?” (From 1794, for those of you who are wondering.) I wrote and submitted the article, but was
told by the editor of the paper that it would need to be rewritten in a way
that showed this particular contracting company in a less than positive
light. I rewrote the article as had been
um… suggested. Needless to say, the
community liaison spread the word to several local business owners that he was interested
in creating a new orifice in my body, and also showed a curiosity about what
size cement shoe I typically wore. I was
writing for free, and if I was going to lose my life over my writing I wanted
to at least be paid by the word.
After leaving the witness protection program and receiving some
encouraging enthusiasm, I decided to contribute a column to the Scituate
Mariner last year about Scituate Citizen
of the Year Bob Corbin and his mutual loves for history and the game of baseball. After writing the Corbin article, the late
Don Pardo’s enigmatic voice began whispering into my subconscious saying, “But
wait, there’s more!” The voice is right.
I need to begin writing again.
The truth is, writing is like therapy to me - and anyone who
knows me can attest to the fact that I can never get enough therapy. So if you miss watching Seinfeld, the
self-proclaimed “show about nothing,”
you will probably look forward to this column, a column that very well may be
about nothing and everything all at the same time. If you liked reading Dave Barry, Mike
Barnicle, Bob Greene, or Andy Rooney, well, I am none of those people (although
in the spirit of Andy Rooney, my eyebrows are growing exponentially by the
day). I look at this column as an
opportunity to force my observations on you, the reader, every two weeks (my
wife will be so proud). And I would continue to write this column
right now, but I have to take my dog to doggie daycare.
Jay Gillespie has experience as a writer,
comedian, musician, radio personality, and is a local history teacher.
Comments
Post a Comment