Coffee and Inspiration

Well that’s it. It’s Friday and we are all but done for the year. Yes indeedy the Boss has agreed to my pleadings and we are shutting the Coffee House until the New Year. Woohoo I am so going to spend the rest of the year tucked up in the arms of Bacchus. Before I go I thought that I would leave you with an inspirational story. I don’t do inspiration myself so I stole this one from Google Answers. For those of you who have never heard of GA as it was known, you missed a rare treat. GA was staffed by 500 researchers who all freelanced. You could ask a question and set your price from $2 to $200. You only paid when your question was answered and Google took a 25% commission on the deal. I used the service myself several times but I (and I suspect many thousands of others) mainly read the questions and answers as a lunchtime recreational 30 minutes. You will have noticed that I am using the past tense and this is because Google pulled the plug at the end of November. I guess that now they are a publicly traded company GA wasn’t making the shareholders enough profit so off it went. This is the unacceptable face of capitalism and it leaves me shaking a fist whilst berating a system that values profit over art. Apparently GA was pulled as answers at Yahoo was more popular, and free. Sadly for anyone with an IQ in double digits Yahoo is for people who a) want to know the latest on Kevin and Britney and b) will accept an answer that looks like “Fed – Ex, OMG LOLOLOLOL. BRB,” written by an 8 year old. I would call on my two readers to boycott Google in protest but that would be a touch hypocritical as Google is hosting this blog.

Anyway here is the story. Some weeks ago as GA was in its death throws someone asked a particular researcher by the name of Tutuzdad to recall a special moment in his life. This is his story, it goes on a bit but it is worth it. Have a nice read and I will see yawls next year.

TCB

It seems we intentionally avoid becoming person in order to preserve the anonymity we've become comfortable with. However, at your request, for you and only you will I bend the rules just this once and share something personal.

The most special thing that ever happened to me was a serendipitous brush with greatness that later proved to be especially enlightening and meaningful to me, though neither of us realized it at the time (and one of us probably NEVER realized it). Here goes: Years ago, back when I was a young police officer working in a cityheavily dependent upon the entertainment industry, I occasionally worked off duty jobs to make ends meet providing personal protection for celebrities, politicians or whoever thought they needed those kinds of services. There were two types of services, bodyguard work and security work. The security work was always the easiest because it didn’t involve any contact with the celebrity. It was mostly guarding doors, buses, back stage areas, etc. The bodyguard work, on the other hand, always required me to work closely with the person and they were almost ALWAYS so full of themselves that the working conditions were often unbearably ungrateful and quite miserable. I was never very start-struck and didn’t consider rubbing elbows with famous people much of a bonus, but the money was good and I needed it so I usually did just took whatever misery they dished out for the pay they offered. On one instance I accepted a job protecting a young man named Troyal, a little known singer from who-knows-where Okalahoma with a not-yet-spectacular musical career. Since I had some experience with these kinds of people I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this assignment. My job was to stay with him for the 12 hours or so that he would be here. I’d eat every meal with him, be on his bus with him, in his dressing room and even on stage with him – just out of view behind a narrow curtain. To be required to spend this much time with a “celebrity” was unprecedented and it hadn’t even started yet before I began dreading every minute of it. When he showed up in his bus around noon that day he didn’t arrive like most celebrities did. His unmarked bus stopped right in front of the concert venue. The door to the bus opened up and out he came – he was wearing sweat pants, a baseball cap and was in his sock feet. He sat down on the bottom step and laced up his dirty tennis shoes. His music wasn’t my cup of tea so I only vaguely recognized him but he went to the trouble to introduce himself to me anyway. He shook my hand and smiled and I remember thinking that HE is probably the only one here who has no idea who HE is. Throughout the afternoon and into the evening I had a lot of time to talk to this young man. He told me a few things about himself but mostly we talked about what he wanted to talk about – me. He asked me question after question about my life, my job, my family and he looked right into my face when I answered and spoke. He genuinely wanted to know more and he absorbed every single word. About himself? Well, he said that he attended Oklahoma State University and all he ever wanted to do was play sports - to throw the javelin or play major league baseball. In fact, until this music thing came along his sports had been the only time he had ever performed publicly in his life. He said he had to take some kind of college courses in order to be able to continue playing sports so he majored in Marketing. He never intended to make commercials or work in the advertising world but he thought it would be nice to have something to fall back on since (unless you plan to become a Zulu warrior or something) there’s really not much call for professional javelin throwers in this world. He said he worked his way through college and paid his tuition by singing at night wherever people would pay him to do it and that, of course, is how he was discovered. He gave up his dream of becoming a famous sports figure – something that he had always hoped and prayed for - and it ultimately led to something even bigger than he originally dreamed. I noticed something else about this young man with the funny name too. He REALLY DID pray. He prayed humbly and quietly at each of our meals saying only “Amen” out loud. Several times he mentioned that he used to pray for “things”, and each time he said that he winked. I didn’tunderstand what that meant until just before the show. On stage, just before the curtain opened, he joined hands with all his band members and roadies and they prayed out loud. He didn’t ask for God to let him put on a good show, or to make him a famous baseball player and he didn’t ask God to help him have a successful performance. Instead, he gave thanks for what God had ALREADY blessed him with and he promised God he’s repay him somehow if he could. He did put on a fantastic show that night and after the end of the show we sat on his bus and chatted for long time, and we talked even more out on the parking lot while he signed autographs for everyone who asked until the wee hours of the morning. I caught myself feeling silly for standing there alone in the fog under a street light at 4 o’clock in the morning waving at the back of this guy’s bus as drove out of my life the same unimposing way it drove in. Some years later this same guy made quite a name for himself and one of his songs in particular stuck with me because, when it first came out, I already knew (and had for years) the story behind it. In the song he sings: “Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”.Even at this young age, the guy with the funny name, Troyal - Garth -Brooks, understood something most of us never figure out…the value of an unanswered prayer. Way back then he had already learned that what we DON’T have can sometimes play an even greater role in what kind of people we become than what we DO have -- and to be careful what you ask for because you MIGHT just get it. I don’t think either one of us really knew who “Garth Brooks” was before that night and I’ve no doubt that he forgot me before the week was out. Years have passed and I’ve never forgotten him though; not Garth Brooks the famous music star, but a happy, bright-eyed,enthusiastic kid in sock feet who stumbled down out of that bus in the middle of Nowhere, USA to impart his wisdom to a guy who was certain he already knew everything. I needed a good dose of that sort of wisdom at that point in my life. I never got to tell him how much I appreciated him for setting me straight – whether he ever knew he did it or not. The fact that he was a celebrity had nothing to do with it (because in his mind he wasn’t).A beggar on the street with the same wisdom could have achieved the same effect. For me, it was literally A STRANGER IN THE NIGHT who ended up being one of the finest people I ever had the good fortune to meet. And I’m so grateful that I did. Suffice it to say that as “nice” things go this was, without question, one of the most memorable things that ever happened to “me”. But then again, there are lots of wise strangers in this world – so there’s no telling who else we just might meet out there next.

Probably not what you had expected (no saved babies or burning buildings) but I hope my story was sufficient to satisfy your curiosity. ;)

best regards;tutuzdad-ga