Lightening Up

The leaves on the apple tree outside my window have finally turned to yellow. They are usually among the last to go. Once they fall, there is no turning back from winter. Today they are just yellow, but I will keep you posted.

“Lighten up Mark”, Amanda will say.
“I am lighter than a fart in the dead of winter”, I will say.

When I was twelve, I had a very short yet interesting conversation with the wife of one of my father’s business associates. I was twelve years old. We were in Barbados…in those days my family still took vacations…and each Friday afternoon, the Colony Club had a swizzle party to welcome new visitors to the resort. This was the second Friday of our stay, and I was becoming an experienced swizzler. With my fruit punch cocktail in hand, minus the vodka, I proceeded to mingle with the adults, “Sssssswizzle, sssssswizzle sssssswizzle.” I would say to each person that I encountered giving myself the impression that I was being every so talk-show-cool, entirely beguiling and floating from one unexpected victim to the next like helium, all the while stirring and sipping my cocktail in a manner which I imagined could only be perceived by others as devastatingly sophisticated. I had a lot of hair then, it must have given me uncalled for bravado.

“Mark Darling”, came the olived complexioned voice of my father’s business associates wife. “Let me give you at little tip Darling….ummm… Repetition weakens.” Her voice like menthol cigarette smoke.

Haaaa?

Oh.

I thought I was being every so light, ever so charming…entirely too adult and in with it like nobodies business. What I was actually being was a twit of one trick pony.

Repetition weakens.

We all must keep our eyes and ears peeled for those unfortunate moments in which we find ourselves lapsing into the swizzle party delusions of youth. I have never forgotten her words and every once in a while I have to remind myself that in the event that one finds oneself fall down drunk on ones own stupidity, one has the option to, at the very least, play it out with more variety. One must make a concerted effort to continually enlarge one’s swizzle party repertoire in order to prevent oneself from becoming overly predictable and in the process inviting the inevitable, yet well deserved ridicule that will inescapably follow such an event.

You said a mouthful Toots.

And so the day begins…swizzle, swizzle, swizzle.