Sunday, October 18, 2020

The Oppenheimer Report 10/5/20


This coming Thursday I will celebrate 65 trips around the sun, and wow is that ever a kick in the pants. Seems like just last week I was the idiot wearing the Lady Godiva wig and drunk dancing to Haircut 100 music at one of my wild Halloween parties. Decidedly no wiser, I am starting to feel older. So much has happened in the past thirty years, and it seems as if the more complicated my life became, the more out of touch I have become with the passage of time. To all you 20-somethings out there, be forewarned: time has a way of pulling the rug out from under you. Lately, when I look in the mirror, I see Festus from Gunsmoke looking back at me. Where did I go? I lost track somewhere in my 30s.  I wrote a song shortly before my 51st birthday, out in Banff in the now famous room #421. It was a forbidding, cold, grey, wet mountain morning, and the wind was howling through the larch trees. I felt some kind of ominous vibe in the air (perhaps I was 15 years too early), and I wrote “The Wind Begins To Blow.” There’s a verse in the song which reads “Lately I’ve been thinking that my time is passing faster, and I feel some sense of dire urgency/ In a month or so I’ll usher in my 51st year, and I’m nowhere near where I thought I would be.” Much has changed in the past 15 years; I try not to “sweat the little stuff” as much as I used to. I also try to avoid that to which I allude in the song; I try not to be disappointed by what I have not accomplished. As I write in an as-yet unfinished lyric: “Sometimes you’ve got to change your dreams before your dreams change you.”

Over the years, Shauna has arranged two surprise birthday parties for me. When I turned 50, she threw a surprise party for me at the Oban Inn at Niagara-On-The-Lake, where we first met. That was the last birthday I celebrated with my mom and dad attending, and there a lot of close friends and family at that party. It remains one of my happiest memories.  She arranged the second surprise party for me when I turned 60. I was at the radio station, broadcasting my Lyrical Workers show, and she secretly arranged for some friends to hijack me in the parking lot as I was leaving the station. The problem was, I wasn’t aware that anybody was waiting for me, I lingered at the station longer than I normally do, and people were shivering outside on a cold October night waiting for over an hour. I felt terrible. Both of those birthday parties were wonderful in their own way, but thankfully, I suspect there will be no surprises this year. Once again, I will celebrate this milestone birthday by presenting my Lyrical Workers show. It is something I love to do. This week, I’ve asked my listeners to suggest any unusual birthday songs they’d like to request.

I don’t really have many big regrets so far. Sure, I’ve squandered some of my time in life’s casino, but who hasn’t? I was going through an old photo album the other day, and I saw some photos I have not seen in a long time. One of the positive results of this self-imposed seclusion is that it has given me ample time to reflect. Last week, we Jews just celebrated Yom Kippur, our highest holy day of the year. It is a day we fast and atone for our sins. I am not a religious man, but I take stock annually of how I have fallen short, and that is a meaningful exercise to me. Everything has been going too fast in the past decade. In some strange way I am relieved that the world has slowed down. Now, I am not quite as attention-challenged, and a photograph of a bunch of my merry pranksters, launching a water balloons at the Comet roller coaster in Crystal Beach, makes me smile.  The guy staring back at me in the mirror might look like a grumpy old curmudgeon, but the guy inside those eyes is still waking up the neighbours with loud rock ‘n roll. As my late brother-in-law used to say: don’t postpone joy.

                        - Written by Jamie Oppenheimer ©2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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