Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Warriors need to be praised. ----- Young men have always been warriors. They’d go fight the battles while the elders sat around the campfire. The elders decided if fighting was the right thing and when and how to do it. The warriors executed the plan. When they returned, they were glorified for their success, or they were coddled in their loss. Either way, they were praised for their efforts. Most old men don’t seek glory like young men do. Something happens after about forty years old, where glory no longer drives behavior. Old men prefer instruction and guidance. Not glory. Learning from...
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It's been a tough few weeks. This commentary offers no specifics, but I've learned some things. ----- Many years ago, my neighbor in Charlotte, North Carolina knocked on my door one weekday afternoon. His wife had just told him she’s leaving. She climbed her car and drove away. He was dumbstruck and he needed to talk. My wife and I had just moved in. I hardly knew him. I didn’t know what to say or what to do. I froze. To my everlasting shame, I rushed our conversation so he’d stop making ME feel uncomfortable. I realized years later he was crying out for help and I failed him. I know...
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My wife and I were headed to a cocktail reception where we knew no one. "This is an opportunity," I said. ----- My wife and I were driving to a short cocktail reception full of people we’d never met. Most of them knew one another. Us? Not a soul. This is an opportunity, I said. Let’s run with it. I proposed that she and I create a story for ourselves. Pick a personality and a background and a job. We’ll create something bordering on sensational and come up with a few very specific details that will make whomever we talk to truly wonder. About us. About whether we’re telling the truth....
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The heat's cooked our brains. ------ The heat’s taken its toll. It’s been unrelenting. Brutal. The greenery looks weary. The grass dries and turns brown within hours of any moisture. My car thermometer regularly reads around 110 and I saw online that it feels much hotter. We need a break. We need relief. My dog looks at me and says “No way I’m walking on that street. That street will burn my feet right off” and she’s right. It's affecting us mentally. We’re budding on crazy. It’s cooked our brains. Recent headlines are all you need to see. A lady in Birmingham faked her...
info_outlineKeepin' It Real with Cam Marston
Last week I danced in front of a train to try to get it to move. ----- Trains have always held great symbolic meaning. They represent the future, a new destination, an opportunity. In movies, the characters board trains in the hopes of greater things down the tracks. Lovers tearfully depart at train stations. Though tragic it’s what’s best for each of them. Bandits of the wild west knew there was a strong box on a train full of money. Convicts break out of jail and if they can make it to the train it will take them away from the misery of prison. Songs, too. The Midnight Special. Midnight...
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This week I take an imaginary walk through Jackson Square in New Orleans and ask a caricature artist to draw me something...different. ----- There are sections of our society that have become parodies of themselves. Once proud, they’re now laughable forms of their former self. Imagine this: You’re walking through the New Orleans French Quarter. You stop at one of the caricature artists on Jackson Square. You say, “Hey Mr Caricature artist. I don’t want a picture of me. I want you to draw a picture of, let’s say, today’s country music.” That caricature artist would draw...
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After thirty years of the same family tradition - I give some thought to the future. ----- For the thirtieth year in a row my SUV left my garage headed for the North Carolina Coast the second to last Saturday in July. If we weren’t in it, it would go by itself. It’s what we do. It’s what the car does. And it was packed tight with everything from fishing gear, to bed sheets, to food, to 150 oysters in the shell on ice, two cakes from Bake My Day, and a case of get-along juice, also known as wine. My in-laws have rented a house on Ocean Isle Beach in North Carolina every summer and we are...
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She hopped to the edge of the platform, raised her arms, and jumped. ----- The video opened on my phone and my daughter was leaping off a bridge and falling out of the frame. It took my breath away. I watched it again and texted her. “Since you sent this to me,” I said, “I assume you survived the fall?” “Yea,” she texted back. “It was awesome.” She’s in South Africa as I write this. She’s spent the month there with a student group called Lead Abroad. It’s a one-month trip where she and about thirty others study leadership and communication skills while experiencing the...
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A cup of coffee with a friend and a few strangers was a wonderful start to a great day not long ago. ----- I’d like to say Hello to Randy Fowler. On Friday mornings he’s in his car on his way to the Restaurant Five in downtown Tuscaloosa with his dog Milo. He’s a regular listener to these commentaries and he reached out to me a few years ago when he liked one to offer a compliment. Turns out Randy’s daughter, Julie Otts, lives a few doors down from me here in Mobile. It’s a small world. Randy and I have visited a few times when he’s in town to visit his daughter, son-in-law, and...
info_outlineKeepin' It Real with Cam Marston
I have an idea for a business. Make up words customers can't understand then upcharge 75%. ----- I think our dog is constipated. She rung her tinkle bell early early in the morning to go outside and she just roamed around the yard in a hurry with her nose down. I have no idea if this is what a constipated dog looks like. I’m assuming that’s her issue. She appears to want to do something but…can’t. The tinkle bell hangs next to the back door. The dog rings it with her nose when she needs to go out. In the wee hours my wife or I stand bleary-eyed in the door waiting for her to do her...
info_outlineA cup of coffee with a friend and a few strangers was a wonderful start to a great day not long ago.
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I’d like to say Hello to Randy Fowler. On Friday mornings he’s in his car on his way to the Restaurant Five in downtown Tuscaloosa with his dog Milo. He’s a regular listener to these commentaries and he reached out to me a few years ago when he liked one to offer a compliment. Turns out Randy’s daughter, Julie Otts, lives a few doors down from me here in Mobile. It’s a small world. Randy and I have visited a few times when he’s in town to visit his daughter, son-in-law, and grandkids.
Several weeks ago, I was in Tuscaloosa for my son’s Bama Bound orientation and Randy invited me to join him and Milo for coffee with his regular crowd one morning at Restaurant Five. I was welcomed as one of their own. We sat, we talked, we drank coffee, and watched all the dogs interact. These old friends have been meeting for coffee for years. They offered greetings to each other, shared inside jokes and laughs. They were wonderfully kind to me and invited me back whenever I’m in town.
That morning, as I waited for Randy to arrive, a very tall man walked past with a coffee and a doughnut and he stopped to talk. He was in town with his son, Grant Nelson, to meet with the Alabama basketball team. He was Nels Nelson. Randy arrived, invited Nels to join us for coffee and Nels did, sharing what life was like in his hometown of Devils Lake, North Dakota. We talked cold weather, the near-by Canadian border in Devi’s Lake, and buffalo. We talked javelin since another of Nel’s sons was a collegiate thrower and my son and Randy’s grandson also throw. Nels, like me, was genuinely appreciative of the warmness Randy and his coffee-drinking friends at Restaurant Five showed him. I’m sure Nels got back to the hotel and told his son – “It’s gotta be Alabama, boy. You gotta play here. It’s simply too friendly to believe. I’m coming back to just have coffee with these people, ya know.”
We were all told as children to not talk to strangers. That’s simply bad advice. Talking to strangers is one of life’s most sure-fire ways of making it a great day. However, it often goes against our inclinations. We worry about improbable outcomes. We misuse our imagination. We think, I don’t know them. What if they don’t like me? What if they don’t want to talk to me? What if they offend me? What if I offend them?
And my reply to all that junk? Who cares? So what. The risk is worth the reward and do you have to lose? Most people are much nicer than we imagine them to be. Our brains, our leaders, our media, whoever, wants us to think that everybody’s out to get us. They’re not. They’re absolutely not. It’s untrue.
Introduce yourself. React kindly to a stranger’s introduction. Find someone new to talk to. You’ll live longer. You’ll be happier. You’ll be glad you did. And you’ll have a great day.
Thanks again for the coffee, Randy, I still remember it. I’ll see you and Milo when I return in the fall.
I’m Cam Marston and I’m just trying to Keep It Real.