How's My Hair? ©

Interesting.
Most of my life I have kept to myself.
Sounds kind of funny for someone who was up front in view of the whole world most of his life but believe it or not, it was the best place3 to hide but sometime you get caught.

I try not to be the center of attention but find myself right in the middle of it because of one thing or another.
In my 50 years of life on this earth I don’t think there are more than 50 pictures of me, 12 of which are mug shots and passport pictures.

So when I walk into the bar one day for a beer I was surprised to notice everyone staring at me.
I ordered a beer and the bartender walked over with it then dropped the newspaper in front of me and said “Nice picture”.

Right there on the second page, half the page to be exact is my mug on display
I was at a computer networking conference and some shutter happy photo took my picture for the paper.

Great, I thought to myself.
For the most part I shy away from the public eye and rather live life from the sidelines but I guess fate puts us in the way sometimes.

I remember one of my friends running into the park one day with the newspaper and showed us his name in print.
He thought it was cool.
“Such and such was arrested last night while breaking into the bowling lanes.
They surrendered themselves to startled police officers that stumbled upon an open door.
Once inside two men staggered out from behind the bowling shoe rack suffering from what appeared to be toxic inhalation”.

Yeah, well I can think of a few other things I would rather have my name attached to in the newspaper.
A few weeks later I walk into the bar and the bartender tosses the paper down in front of me and say, “You’re making a habit out of this”.

WTF, I look at the paper and about four pages in there I am again walking down the street.
I’m thinking I have a stalker with a camera.

Let me try an explain to you how private I keep my life.
I was at a funeral and my aunt, a woman who had seen me almost daily for the first 25 years of my life until she divorced my uncle bumped into each other.
I said hi and she returned the greeting.
Then she apologized and asked me who I was and when I told her she freaked out.
There are members of my immediate family who haven’t seen me in decades because I live in a world outside of theirs.
I live in my universe.
This way I can control what is in my universe even if it doesn’t belong to me, like rules.
Everyone has to live by the same rules but it doesn’t mean you can’t work around them.

So as you can see I keep to myself and out of sight.
Thursday my mother calls and she says she and my father want me to take them for their H1N1 shot.
I told them fine, just tell me where.
She said she was hoping I knew.

I look up and find that they are giving them not to far from my place at a local community center so I pack up the over the hill gang and head off to get stabbed in the arm.
We get to the community center and go in.
They tagged us with bracelets each and told us to be back at 2pm when it will be our turn so we went home.
Because I hadn’t gotten a seasonal flu shot they said they would give me one of those too.
Great, I love needles, NOT.

When 2pm rolled around we were sitting in the auditorium waiting for out numbers to be called out.
That’s when this blond chick walks in holding a huge microphone that looked like a black version of one of those Hitachi massagers.



She was followed by a guy with a large camera on his shoulder.
I could hear my father groaning next to me already as soon as he saw her.
There had to be 150 people in the room so the chances of her coming our way where we were was slim and I told him that.
We continued to quietly set there waiting for our numbers to be called when I looked up and across the room and our eyes met over the people.
Three minutes later there was a black massager in my face and tank turret pointed at my head.
My father whispering to me in Greek, “Why did you look at her”?
FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!

She said she was with a news channel and wanted to ask me a few questions.
This wasn’t the first time I ended up on the news.
There was that time I was tackled in the 80s for something I said to the president of some banana republic that barely escape assassination.
I think it was something like, “To bad they missed”.
I guess he was still a little sensitive on the subject.

She asked me why I was there and I told her it was so my parents could get their H1N1 shot.
Then they panned my parents with the camera and they both looked like deer caught in the headlights of a car.
They turned back to me and asked if I was getting mine and I said I was along with the seasonal shot.
She interviewed me for a few minutes then they called our numbers and we were gone.
On the way upstairs for our shots my father gave me crap, “Why did you tell them you knew us, now everyone will see us on TV”?
That’s gratitude for you.
I get them a few minutes of fame and they shit all over me.

Inia thought it was great and now thinks she’s fucking a celebrity.
At least I didn’t get Tiger Woods headlines HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!

Have a nice weekend

Walker