I Found Myself

“I found myself!”

I sound like a flower child, don’t I, or one of those shaggy hippies of the 60’s where they’re laying about, looking skyward, aimless, claiming they’re trying to find themselves?

You think I’m a boomer, a baby boomer?

Nah, I’m at the tail end of that boom.  After that big population explosion I was just a spit-pop at the end, a little fizzle, spizzzzzt.

Being at the tail end of what newspeople call the boomers is like a toddler looking up at a 1960’s dad with a halo around his head.  It wasn’t a gold angelic ring!  LOL.  It was ethereal…hazy…“like lost in the clouds, man.”

I’m from a little burg in the road, it rests along the east side of a river.

It’s idyllic.

Lazy river.

Full of fish and frogs.

Ducks diving for food with happy quacks.

Men with tied-back hair barbecuing their catches on the far shore next to sunbathing Barbie.

Kayaks and canoes paddling by.

Weeping willows dipping their branches in the ripples.

Red roses gloriously blooming on the banks.

This burg is home.  It’s also home to a grocer, a lumberjack, a fireman, and Ted.

Ted, too, has been trying to find himself … for the past 10 years!

Ted meanders through the streets feeding half his food to the neighbor’s dog, poking into every one’s mailboxes making sure the letters are theirs, I think, checking packages left by UPS and running off with his favorites.

Yah, he’s still trying to find himself.  When he was seen jumping in and out of his reflection in a 3 paned picture window, like a dog that barks at his own reflection, he said he was just trying to find himself.

You know how you do that, don’t you, find yourself?  Google, yep, Google.  Put your name in that little address bar…and up you’ll pop.  Pop, pop, pop,109 times pop, pop, pop, little pictures all over the screen pop, pop, pop.  There’s your name attached to each one, pop, pop, pop, right there in living color  - -  goofy grins, bug eyes, withered prune face, giraffe tongued, and llama lips for a hat! 

Why, “I found myself” on the Jersey shore,

in Washington’s Space Needle,

in the droop of Texas,

on the Keys to Cuba,

lost in the Appalachians,

and then, right there in the middle of ‘em all … on the edge.  

One woman in Colorado, with the Grand Canyon in the photo's background and in the foreground a donkey, was on the edge!  

There’s another way to find oneself.  Books.   “Finding Yourself” by Surely Holme, and  “How to Find Yourself” by Ima Drift, or “Finding Yourself for Dummies” written by B. A. Wiseman.

Don’t tell your brother you’re finding yourself, he’ll say “Look in the funny papers.”

Don’t tell your sister either, she’ll say, “Look in a mirror.”

And then there’s dad, “You’re right here, why would you wanna go find yourself?”