I’ve bought more panties, bras and pads

than any gay man should.

More comfy purses to fit my arms

than any straight man would.

To beauty parlors, nail salons

and pharmacies with you.

Been here and there and everywhere…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Our little walks and tearful talks

and stories of your life,

Have filled the days with laughs so thick,

can’t cut them with a knife.

I get us lost, you drive me mad

and tell me what to do

But we always end up back at home…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

The butt of jokes and puns of posts

that make so many happy

That Q-Tip hair, the clothes you wear,

you always look so snappy.

So many pics that you have nixed

and some you never knew

You make life fun to be your son…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

Clockwork calling days and nights

to see how your day went

You always ask reciprocally,

The way that mine was spent.

I can’t imagine how it will be

some day when yours are through

You’re woven deep in my days and weeks…

I’m not sure what I’ll do.

No clue what I will do.

With a little luck, patience and a few decades, most 18 year olds eventually turn 50.  Some arrive a little sooner, but barring tragedy or developmental setback, nearly all arrive safely and on time with enough life experiences to have made it worth the wait.

When I was 18, so was my entire world.

A society of 50 something year olds was an unconscionable concept. It was a morgueful of the old and diapered on canes, cursing gravity through dentures between sips of chicken noodle soup someone else fed them. Nobody wanted to be there, they just arrived one day on a short bus to the grave.

At 18, 50 something was a distant age of unnecessary people.

I wish back then I’d known otherwise.

Today, the gears of my world run on 50 year olds.

I’m talking about all my friends from high school and before who made it here unincarcerated, consciences intact, generosities abundant and much kinder hearts for their journies.

The career I chose is one that helps the most unfortunate of the 50 plus generation who are indeed, diapered and caned, dentured, dying and worse. What was unconscionable at 18 is my everyday reality now where I work to add a little glitter to the not so golden years of the poorest group of senior citizens this country has ever created.

Thankfully, I don’t work alone.

I have a lot of 18 year olds who help me.

People like Steve, Misty, Lori, Cece, Tama, Jenai, Karen, Marc, Anne, Heidi, and all those who have re-emerged from my high school woodwork to support my cause. The captain of my high school football team, the first runner up at junior prom, the bass player from band, songleaders, student council secretaries, and even the weird kid from the lunch room…they all grew up and into really cool people who now partner with me 40 years later in my pursuits to feed, clothe and care for people we all once thought unnecessary and fortunately, have not yet ourselves become.

We are all still a bunch of dreamy-eyed 18 year old high school kids who eventually woke up to realize that all people are necessary to make this world a better place for all people.

So shout out to a lifetime of friends who still have my back just like we were 18 all over again, only kinder now, and up for challenges of life that make a difference.

“There’s a bad apple in every bunch” and other pacifying clichés are a premature resolve to situations for which there are no simple solutions.

Some people are thugs, some are racist, and some are overly enamored by power and authority. The human condition is littered with them about as inseparably as babies and bathwater.

Some. Not all.

Information technology, surveillance videos and camera phones deliver them to us 24/7 for rush judgments and have trained us to render instant clichés and unenlightened opinions before the next breaking news story takes the limelight.

But when that next limelight is but the same story in a new venue, clichés are useless. The power of fear these stories induce demands a more substantial literary device. Throwing a cliché at a bunch of dead people is no longer a solution.  Like thoughts and prayers, it never promised to.  If people were truly thinking and praying as much as they say they are, a solution would have emerged by now instead of just another useless platitude.

I don’t think the question is whether we are all equal, but rather, do we want to be?

We say we fight against discrimination between the differences of people at the same time we are mad at work differentiating ourselves, climbing the ladder from a lower rung onto one better and more distinguished. Success in American culture unfortunately lies squarely in the value of being better than. Where’s the pride in being equal?

Some who can’t seem to climb become thugs. Some who have climbed feel compelled to prove it with power and authority. And the rest of us either take sides or create clichés to exempt ourselves from the problem while secretly profiling the “some” as “all” but publicly offering only fleeting thoughts and shallow prayers of hope that the next time it won’t happen in my neighborhood.

There are no good apples.

All are bruised and imperfect in some way, yet misled by a private logic that they are “better than” in their fight to the top of the basket while denying the real truth that all apples were created equal and together, can make a very satisfying pie.

Chop off our own bruises and imperfections and we all look the same in the basket.

That is, if we will risk being equal as it was originally intended.

I once knew a man who had a serious brush with depth, failed to resurface, lost his life and, thank God, was never the same again.

Each of us is given one, perhaps two moments in a lifetime to dramatically change course if we want it bad enough, have vision to notice the opportunity and the courage to act upon it.

This world would have us believe that succumbing to the shallows is the only safe existence. Never venturing into unknown waters, we risk dying without discovery of our purpose or the endowment of a superpower which equips us to see past the drivel of the commonplace and into the extraordinary unknown.