The Rewards of Day Dreaming

(continued from July 7, 2009)

My talent for [daydreaming] appeared at an early age. To my mortification, I saw that many of my childhood contemporaries were clearly more handsome, more clever, more worldly than I. From first grade on they received more valentines from the prettiest girls. In eighth grade they won the music memory contest and in High School they were the first to obtain a driver's license. Clutching my few valentines, struggling to distinguish Mozart from Beethoven, gaping at a yellow convertible speeding out of the school parking lot, I honed the self-isolating art of reinventing myself. I day dreamed that I received a valentine with a heart drawn on it from the prettiest girl in the class; that I could differentiate Prokofiev from Mahler and that I was an adolescent sophisticate driving with one hand on the wheel and the other around a girl. Thus, the motives in attending my 50th high school reunion were not entirely pure.

More Later, Joe

New Kid on the Blog

No matter the circumstances into which we were born, no matter the personal Mt. Everests we conquered, the wealth and the resulting pleasures we acquired, or the poverty we endured, the honors we gained or the hurtful snubs at the end we are all moralists. In our final hours we understand that the worth of our lives is measured by the personal relationships we had -- as child, student, worker, friend, as son, daughter, brother, sister father, mother, grandparent. In those final hours we realize that our personal universe was small, and whether we did well or poorly, we wish we had another chance so that we could do better.

I feel it to be one of the triumphs in my life that I came to appreciate this before my final hours. I am a few months shy of age ninety-four. By the way, my name is Joseph L. Taylor. I use the "L" to differentiate myself somewhat from the tens of thousands of "Taylors" (such temerity! -- I have seniority rights to that name) in the world, although I would have to add "Junior and "III" to make a full distinction. Another "by the way" -- I am a published writer of personal essays, short stories and poetry, but you will not find my work in your library. My publications were in the Op-Ed and Sunday Magazine pages of newspapers in Philadelphia and in the literary journal "The Compass." But I expect a book of mine that is now in the editing stage to turn up in libraries. More of that later.