Friends from the Street

Have you ever tossed and turned during the night knowing the cause was being over tired and wiped out? That was I some few days ago.

Our business is so damn strange; it always has been.  We can sit and stare at the walls wondering whether anyone exists out there in the realm of advertising or if they have all expired into the wind, and been blown out to sea.

Thankfully, June 2012 has turned into a battle of the fittest. We’ve been slammed with business. Slammed to the point of being bone weary at the end of each day. But the real culprit, or tipping point (as some would call it) as cause celebre for my exhaustion is my freeway drive home at the end of each day. It’s an easier task handling the traffic in the morning than the madness that transpires when we’re attempting our return home.

If what follows seems to be a touch disjointed, it’s not without reason. My words were stimulated by the mish mash, which took place during the wee hours of the morning. I chose to scribe as the thoughts entered and departed, in and out of my brain at around three AM these past few mornings. If it doesn’t make sense, I apologize, but ask along with your forgiveness to please not question me as to the saliency of what I have transcribed. Perhaps, if life disturbs your sleep, you’ll be able to identify with me, or maybe not. My dreams are only special because they are mine. I am told that most dreaming takes place only moments before we awaken. That being said it becomes amazement when these surreal sequences are taking place in a few short seconds before we are actually fully cognizant that the dream itself has come to an end.

 

·               Time, unknown

·               Origin, unknown

·               Players, from my past

            They entered my bedroom all at the same time. Participants as real as in any dream I’ve ever experienced – in living color and simultaneous black and white. All appearing in a sweep across my screen, without the benefit of a screen, accompanied by a recognizable variety of sounds and smells from my then ten year old existence. From my bleary mindset I said to myself this has to be a dream. Yet it was as real as it ever looked when I was actually back there with my friends from the street. We never expressed verbal love for each other; thinking about it assures me love was there, it had to be. 

My Friends from the street – we were all different, yet all the same. You have to love them, I know I do; I probably always have.

Don’t say this and don’t say that and be ultra careful about becoming offensive to anyone and everyone. We’re in a new society of “let’s be careful.” Watch what you do in addition to watch what you say. “Let’s Be Anal Time,” a great name for a reality show, don’t you think?

What follows is a basically an unedited version of a dream sequence as best recalled by a man who rarely gives thought to political correctness. He laughs at the folly of others as if they were his own.

***

Ah…

Breathe in deeply the streets of Brooklyn, New York. My home territory was spread equally between Brownsville and Flatbush, both townships within the borough of Brooklyn.

Each of these communities had recognizable neighborhoods, fully stocked with the world’s ethnicities.

If Noah were required to take two of each from our streets, his ark would not have been big enough. That’s not to imply we were like animals. It’s my way of being descriptive and truthful, as opposed to being politically correct.

I admit I am not now nor will I ever be confused with those who stammer along in life with the terrible burden of political correctness. 

And laughing is what life is all about (in my humble opinion). We kids at play in the streets (dodging whatever happened to be headed our way at the time) always spent large chunks of our day laughing at everything, everybody, every sound, and especially at each other. We weren’t class clowns… anyway not all of us… well, probably most.

The kids who were one year older than us were the leaders. They were known, of course, as the big guys. Our chronological age designated us as “the wannabes” – the younger kids always designated as the followers. The particular ethnicity was of no consequence when it came to leadership amongst us kids. I t was always the same: the big guys and the rest of us.

And there they strode into my bedroom with the same gusto we all lived our lives with. Brooklyn, New York was frenzy while it happened and a frenzy getting ready to happen. Good God, was I ever capable of moving at that kind of fever-pitched pace?

In a split second, the kids were gone and their parents somehow took their places in my life. The pace slowed momentarily but the energy level increased. They dressed as if it were yesterday, a kaleidoscope of color and style. Foreign languages mixed in with broken English, neighborhoods adjoining without the divisiveness of walls. It was an overall environment stoked with dignity. The streets were mobbed with people and in a split second they moved into an enormous room with no dividers to separate them. The neighborhood had been instantly melded into a single community of mixtures, ever changing as I observed them. I knew them all, but was unable to single out any one person or family.

What I retained was the abundance of people from all over Europe gathered together in a huge room within my bedroom holding a community meeting.

Both sides of my family held their own special meetings. It was not an uncommon happening amongst the hordes of immigrants in our distinctly ethnic neighborhood. Within a few short miles of our Brownsville Brooklyn neighborhood we were jam-packed with humanity. Each denomination shared the alikeness of taking a first step on their land to be, all in the same fashion. Regardless of the country of origin, all of them felt a pride in having been welcomed by the Statue of Liberty.

None of us gave thought about the reputation Brownsville Brooklyn was building for itself. Until I became an adult I wasn’t aware there was such a thing as the Jewish Mafia AKA “Murder Incorporated.” It wasn’t that any group of people were prideful about having their own group of gangsters, it was simply a way of life. The immigrants arrived, the good and the bad. And within each neighborhood, the dedication to one’s family and faith was an apparent driving force. 

Not all family or friends are welcomed or revered…

There are times when certain aunts and/or uncles are known to be on the not-ready-for-revered list. Revered or not, part of their entertainment was to regularly visit other members of the family.

Almost without exception, all the immigrants had large families.

(My Mother’s side had eight siblings who survived a midwife delivery; my Father’s side had nine.)

My cousins and I found the whole visiting bit a chance for us to be alone while the adults solved the problems and vagaries of the world we lived in.

I quickly discovered many things about my relatives that provided great humor for me. The aunt with her endless chatter, the uncle who continually makes a variety of awful sounds, and those who indiscriminately drag children along for the disturbance aspect of what helps to create a dysfunctional group. When they all show up in a dream at the same time, the noise is deafening.

…And as the enchantment of an aria from Madam Butterfly came through the speaker of my alarm clock radio, they were all instantly gone.