It Starts Here.

Hi. My name is Don McKennan. I’m Dave’s Brother. I’m a stagehand. Dave was, too.

My brother Dave died in an automobile accident several years ago. I miss him today as much as I did the day he died. I still see him walking down the street, almost every day, & I can still hear him calling me from down the block, somewhere behind me. But no. He’s gone. He’s gone & he’s not coming back.

Dave was a stutterer. A stammerer, actually. Watching or listening to him try to unbottle himself was always painful, but I thought that spitting out the word he was stuck on for him, whether out of compassion or impatience, would be worse, for both of us. Not surprisingly, Dave never used a hundred words when ten would do. (I, as you shall see, am the opposite.) Besides, he was usually worth the wait.

Some years before he died, I was very surprised when he told me that he was running for union office. Stagehands can be a very tough audience. As Dave put it, All you have to do is stand up at a union meeting & introduce yourself, & immediately one third of the membership will hate your guts. In our culture, ‘fucking asshole’ is generally a term of endearment.

I asked him what made him do it, because public speaking was clearly not his strong suit. He said, After years of letting other people control the debate & being reluctant or afraid to contribute, the day came when I felt like I needed to be the person standing on the soapbox.

I said, Good for you, then. I’m not there yet.

He said, You’ll get there. You have more to say than I do.

(More words, certainly. More substance, I dunno.)

I said, How will I know when I’m ready.

He said, When the time comes, you’ll know. You can’t predict it, & you can’t force it.  He said, You might not even be aware that it’s your time to get up on the soapbox until, suddenly, you realize that you’ve already been on it for half an hour, railing against the gods. Or tilting at windmills.

He lost that election, and held a victory party anyway.

Well. Perhaps my moment has come. I read so much drivel these days that passes for rational thought & reasoned discourse, tales ‘told by an idiot, all sound & fury, signifying nothing.’ The way I look at it, I can’t possibly do any worse.

So. It starts. Here come a few more idiot’s tales. Just what the world needs.

It’s hard to tell. Maybe I’ve been there half an hour already.