My Uncle's Shoes

You Haven't Seen the Last of Me!

Tom Froehlich

Sorry, I’ve been gone for a while. Sometime life gets in the way and sometimes we get in the way of life. But, you haven’t seen the last of me. We all go through down times. Sometimes we understand where it’s coming from and sometimes crazy just grabs a hold of us and won’t let go. And then we realize that in many cases, it is actually us who has grabbed a hold of crazy with a life crushing strangle hold. And no matter how hard we try, we simply can’t let go. It seems as if no matter where we look life sucks. Everyone else has more than us. Everyone is prettier than us. Is more successful than us. And of all unchangeable and horrific realities, is younger than us.

The disparaging and unchangeable reality that they are younger doesn’t really have to do with the fact that they have gym-toned asses you can bounce a manhole cover off of. It has more to do with time. They have time. Time to experience new things. Time to fall in love. Time to get their heart broken, heal and fall in love all over again. Time to climb the corporate ladder and time to chase dreams. Assholes.

“Bitter! Table for one!!”

I once saw an Oprah interview with Cher and Tina Turner after they had both turned sixty. Oprah asked the question, “But don’t you think that it is true that with age comes experience and wisdom and that makes it all worth it?” Both Cher and Tina laughed and Cher responded with a bleep, “Are you kidding?! Getting old @#$%^ing sucks!”

Tina pointed to Cher and said, “Like she said!”

The thing about getting older is that we tend to look back at our lives and see the things we would have done differently. And the shockingly unsurprising result is that when we rewrite the script for our lives it all turns out great! I mean, only an idiot would write a shitty ending, right? Unfortunately the harsh reality is that if we did it all over again we would probably be just as stupid and probably make the same stupid mistakes. Fall in love with the wrong person. Take the wrong job. Have the twelfth shot of tequila and think riding that mechanical bull is in fact a terrific idea. Yet for some reason our minds can’t help but get caught up in the endless loop of “what ifs” and “how comes”. The thing is, rewriting our past does nothing to help us create our future. Letting go of it does.

Now back to Cher. Recently I watched a video of her current concert tour. If you want to feel bad about not making something of your life take a look at that woman! That’s what I like to do if I have yet to attain a suitable level of self-loathing. I mean, here is a woman who other than that little glitch with Sonny, has had a career beyond belief. Grammy awards, Emmy awards, Golden Globe awards, Academy awards, you name it. She even has the aforementioned ass you can bounce a manhole cover off of!  Really! Have you seen her lately!? It’s as if the woman has in fact, “turned back time”! And I don’t care if she has had work done! She looks amazing! Even if you strip away the feathered headdresses, sequins, garters, booby-thrusting bustiers, she is smokin’ hot at age sixty-seven! In her last concert she did in fact strip away much of that finery and appeared on stage wearing nothing but a pair of heart-shaped pasties showcasing her amazingly firm and shapely breasts. Yup! And trust me, if you look that good at sixty-seven you will be wearing pasties too!

Have you noticed that since she gave Sonny the ole heave hoe it seems she does whatever the hell she chooses? Her career and her life have been on her terms. Her choices. Nobody else’s. And you never hear about a drug bust or her careening down the Pacific Coast Highway shit faced with a bottle of Jack in one hand and a crack pipe in the other. Sure, she has had some relationships that the rest of the world, although it’s none of their God damn business, has chosen to question. Really?! Have you seen the “Bagel Boy” Rob Camilletti? I would have bought a baker’s dozen as well!! Heavy on the “shmear”!!  At any rate, I think not allowing anyone else to call the shots as she prances the path that is her destiny has kept her centered. She doesn’t need to look back and wonder, “What if?”, because she in fact did.

Where is all of this going?! What is my point you ask? My point is that it is ridiculous to compare our lives to that of others. We are all unique human beings and are here to manifest everything that we are meant to be. I mean, we can’t all be Cher. Let’s face it. There simply aren’t enough sequins to go around.

And secondly, we can’t “turn back time”. One of the sad realities of life is that we all get older and we eventually die. Case closed. We can’t change that. What we can do, is make sure that we take advantage of every single moment and opportunity life offers. That is in fact one of the benefits of getting older. We realize that our time on this planet is finite and therefore we are willing to take more chances and live life on our terms. No one else’s. Only you can walk the path the Universe has laid out for you. Only you can become the you that you were meant to be. Rock that shit!

And lastly, it is nobody’s Goddamn business what you choose to do with your life! Just do it for God’s sake!! I got a news flash for you. Nobody really cares all that much what you do anyway. Really. They don’t. At the end of the day they are too self-absorbed with their own lives to care about what you are up to so let it go. 

So Cher and I may be walking different paths and I most likely won’t be sporting heart shaped pasties at the age of sixty-seven (Oh! Who am I kidding! I’ve already mentally fashioned one of them into a strategically placed thong!! I wonder if she has a spare?!), but I’ll tell one thing I do know, just as Cher belted out the in lyric from the movie Burlesque, “You haven’t seen the last of me!”