I have just been handed a check that I’m not sure I want to cash. In the amount space it reads “Reality.”
The other day, I took a couple of hours out of the middle of the day to take my now grown Baby Girl out to lunch. By the end of your first full week on your first job after college graduation, sometimes you need a break from so much learning all over again. I had visions of taking her to Houston’s or Dailey’s or even Hard Rock (in downtown Atlanta). After being introduced to her new boss and a few co-workers, reality sets in. She doesn’t have time to spend 2 hours getting in and out of any of the better, nicer or more exciting places for lunch. The Varsity (the original grease pit for fast food) will have to do.
Now don’t get me wrong, I sometimes require my grease job, too. We took Baby Girl to the Varsity every single time that we took her to see a play or show in downtown or midtown Atlanta. Go backstage and meet Sandy Duncan, then you go to the Varsity (at 11:30 P.M.). Go backstage and meet Barbara Eden, you go to the Varsity (regardless of the time). When I worked at BellSouth Center, someone came around every Friday and scooped up bodies for the block and a half trek to the Varsity. I went once a month whether I needed cleaning out or not.
The Varsity is a prerequisite to graduation from North Avenue Trade School (Georgia Tech). When I took Little Fella out of school to witness our World Famous World Champion Atlanta Braves in parade in 1995, even at 10:00 A.M., it was required that we stop at the Varsity on our way to the parade route. Some institutions just don’t have to be written in stone to be followed.
But I really had a little less reality in mind when I went to take Baby Girl to lunch. We had a truly delightful lunch, flavored by too many onion rings, french fries and chili dogs. Beloved humorist Lewis Grizzard would have been proud of us. And I can still smell the exhaust of that reality, days later!
The rest of my reality check for that day came after I took her back to work and got back in my car. During the short drive around downtown near Five Points, I came back down to Earth.
The old black man crossed the street slowly in front of me while I stopped at the light. Slumped shoulders, lower jaw hanging down, shabby coat, all classic symptoms of a solitary member of a downtrodden group, down on his luck, tired of his lot in life. Until I noticed the socks. He had his white athletic socks pulled up over the outside of his pants legs to help seal out the cold wind. The yellow stripes in the middle around the top matched, but the orange stripes on one and the blue stripes on the other didn’t. Homeless. Reality? No. The reality of it was that 2 - 3 out of the 37 people that crossed at the light were probably also homeless. Now that’s reality.
As I cruised the streets for a short while, I was privy to other realities. Georgia State University students have to cross major intersections to go get something to eat other than cafeteria food. Two out of every five fast food places are of foreign extraction, not just serving foreign food, but owned by immigrants. The traffic animal stops for no one, let alone jay-walkers. Wind whipping between skyscrapers travels at 73 ˝ miles per hour. Olympic Park is empty. There are no police officers on every other corner anymore, but there are still hippies, now called loafers, there. The Georgia State Police Department has beautiful light fixtures framing its entrance, the old fashioned kind like in those old police movies filmed in New York City. Children still skip school to wander around downtown.
I mused these realities on the way back to my insulated life in suburbia, in my foreign car, to my mortgaged home, where my protected family sleeps, in clothing that fits, after they’ve eaten freshly cooked food, and taken nice hot showers. Sometimes it’s good to witness first-hand a different reality. It helps me appreciate mine more.
But I will still accept checks in the “reality” amount of $1.2 million. The name is spelled J-O-H-N-N-I-E L-E-W-I-S.
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