(re-run)
Reading my Time magazine today (something I’ve been doing for 47 years), I noticed on the obits page that Shannen Doherty of 90210 fame, died on July 13th at the young age of 53 (breast cancer). I didn’t watch 90210, but everyone knows who Shannen Doherty is (was).
Then I saw that exercise guru Richard Simmons also died on July 13th, but he was 76. I owned a video of Sweatin’ to the Oldies, just like everyone else did in the 80s. I had the leg warmers, the sweat band, and the crazy high-cut leotard with different colored tights. Richard didn’t have the hard body of say a Jane Fonda (I had her work-out video too), but he was loud and fun, and he showed us that anyone could work out, no matter how in or out of shape they were.
As I kept reading the obits page, I noticed that Dr. Ruth, the sex doctor, also died on July 13th at the age of 96. She was delightful in her frank answers to the most intimate of questions about sex. Shelley Duvall also died but she passed two days earlier than the trio mentioned herewith.
Obituary pages are reminders that life is short, you don’t know how long you have, and you’d better get out there and have some fun before it’s too late. What does fun mean to you? Dancing with friends? Going to movies? Traveling? Eating out at every new restaurant within a fifty-mile radius? Going shopping? Gardening? Training dogs?
I’ll never forget the friend that chastised me for not traveling. “I’d die if I couldn’t travel,” she said to me several years back. She looked at my life as somehow deprived because I wasn’t jetting off to places around the world. But seriously, how could she not see that I was having my fun by going out dancing, singing in a chorus, and tending my second home near the ocean?
Everyone’s fun is different, and thank goodness, because if it were all the same the dance floor would be much too crowded. And then it’s just bumper cars and me whacking some lady in the head with my elbow (I’m pretty tall and have gangly arms).
But I digress.
The point of this blog is done. Go out. Live your life. Don’t hold back. I have regrets about things I didn’t do in high school. But honestly, those years were full of acne and a basic wardrobe (no money) and maybe the wrong group of friends (not ambitious) and OCD and being a klutz and having flat feet and having bad balance that no one ever noticed or advised me about.
There. I’ve vomited all over the page. The beauty of a blog post is that you can do that and no one is going to grade this paper or send me a rejection letter. Sure, you might opt out of this tab, but I’ll never know unless you leave a scathing comment, and who has time in their busy life to do that?
Hopefully, no one.
A year later, and the trio is Ozzy Osbourne, Malcom Jamal Warner, Hulk Hogan, and Chuck Mangione.
FIRST DATE, WORST DATE EVER! 