Geekiness

I had a class in H.S. called Poetry and Music. It was taught by Mr. Basil. He was a pretty cool dude. We read poetry and talked about it, not in a literary sense, but in a "how does it affect you and me as persons" sense. How are we moved by the music and poetry around us? What music and/or poetry might be in us that we can share with each other? He had us watch Leo Buscaglia videos and read Robert Fulghum and Hugh Prather and we talked and wrote poetry and brought in our cassettes of music to share. It was a very groovy class, and it introduced me to these writers (free thinkers) that really had quite an affect on me.

You may have read or at least heard of the book called All I Ever Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, written by Robert Fulghum. Well, he wrote another book that inspired my wacky titles. He wrote a book called It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It.

In this book he includes an essay on Geek Dancing. (Not Greek Dancing) It's a beautiful essay in which (among other things) he talks about two older folks who don't look like they could walk across the street much less dance but have been dancing together for so long they move with ease and grace that has been perfected over the years so well that they don't even need to speak, they just dance, and it turns out beautifully.

Within that essay is a paragraph about geekiness that I sort of relate to, and I'd have to contest his assertion that this happens around age 60, because I'm not even close to 60 and I feel like I'm nearly there.

"At some point your genetic code presses a switch in your head. You look in your closet to dress for the day and you say to yourself, who cares? You reach the point somewhere around sixty when you decide to just go ahead and weird out. You start out the door in your house slippers, headed for the grocery store, and you don't go back and change into shoes. To hell with it. Or you go out to the mailbox in your bathrobe--your oldest, sleaziest, comfiest bathrobe--and don't give a damn who sees you. Or when someone rings the doorbell, you don't check in the mirror to see how you look. You just open the door. It's their problem, whoever they are. So you aren't color-coordinated anymore. So? So you don't make your bed every day. So? Your life becomes like your old car--just as long as it runs and gets you there, who cares how it looks? Some people call this going to seed. Others call it the beginning of wisdom. Take your pick."

I don't know about you. I call it wisdom. Once, about 6 years ago, I got to church and someone said "Dude! I love your shoes! Where did you get those?" I looked down and lo and behold I had gotten all the way to church in my brown fuzzy slippers. When I told them they were my slippers they sort of looked at me in awe and said "You came to church in your slippers? That is SO COOL!" I tried to explain that I didn't do it on purpose, but the cool factor had gone way up and I have to say I kind of liked that. So I felt a little stupid (but cool) for about 5 minutes and then I remembered the Robert Fulghum paragraph and thought "Yup. I've become the Geek. But I'm a WISE Geek!"

Beauty and Grace and Wisdom and Geekiness really can go together, I'm finding out. And it's a gift, the ability to see it all in the same place.
What lovely messes we are, when we aren't trying so hard to hide from each other.