May 17, 2007 Issue

After my last column wherein I regaled faithful readers with a story about my one-day adventure as a trail rider, I got an email message from my friend and colleague Breanne Boland saying how much she enjoyed it. She said while she always looks forward to my expositions on whatever may be happening in the world, she especially likes hearing stories she’s never heard. As our relationship as friends was building and since I have several decades more of life than she does, I often told her about things in my past. Places I had been, interesting folks I had met.

I shared with her the truth that I am a weirdo magnet. I told her I could be sitting on a nearly empty bus and if a person with a problem got on the bus, they would immediately sit down beside me. When I was a college student, I took the bus to and from my home on school breaks. It was a trip of several hours because of being on the bus. In the car and without making stops, the trip would have been about four hours. The bus made it a six-hour journey.

Countless times on those trips, people would plop down beside me and begin talking to me about the status of their lives. They were never happy stories. They were always fraught with drama. These were advice-seeking strangers asking a young person for advice. I used to look at my face in the mirror and try to see what it was that made people seek me out in this way. I never discovered it, but whatever it is, it must still be there because this still happens.

When Breanne was living here and not long after I told her about this condition of mine, we found ourselves in Seaside to attend a play or something. We were early so we got a drink and were sitting outside the theatre chatting. With absolutely no hesitation a young man sat down and started in on his sad tale. Breanne looked at me and said nothing while I chatted with him. He was clearly troubled and it was equally clear the only thing I could do for him was to listen. It was at that moment I realized that perhaps my willingness to listen was the subliminal message my face was broadcasting. Perhaps that part of my personality that is always interested in people is what led me to be a volunteer at a crisis line in Houston for close to 10 years.

Another friend, photojournalist Kris Chavez, who I ran into at the Autumn Tides kickoff luncheon last week, said she could just see me atop a huge horse clomping along the freeways of San Antonio. Of course, she was visualizing the scene as I am now, not as I was 30 years ago when there was considerably less of me and I was considerably more agile.

By the way, the surest way to get the media to show up is to feed us. The Autumn Tides organizers and the folks at Watercolor served up some avocado and chicken soup that made me want to sit in front of the tureen with a giant spoon. I almost swooned with pleasure. I’m not at all sure what all was in it. It was billed as avocado and buttermilk soup. I almost didn’t try it because I don’t care for buttermilk, but I did and was instantly addicted. A touch of cilantro and perhaps some other spice gave it some zip. It was the best cold soup I have ever tasted, but I digress.

The thought occurred to me that our lives are made up of stories; little vignettes starring us, family members, memorable vacations, co-worker sagas and sometimes interesting encounters with complete strangers. Sometimes we forget incidences in our lives until a cousin reminds us of an event long ago in shared family history.

And thus we have stories. My brother and sister remember things I do not and vice versa. It is odd the way this works, because if we were all there, one would think we would all remember it, but that is not the case.

It is nice to know that if column ideas are slow in coming, I can always mine my own past and see if I find a vein of interest.

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