The Older Woman

As a high school junior, I considered myself no better or worse than my peers. I enjoyed school as much as a teenage boy could and life was routine. That was until I met The Older Woman!

I think every adolescent boy fantasizes about having a relationship with an older and experienced woman. Just a fantasy, a passing daydream and then forgotten right? WRONG!

In high school, I was pretty much a loner. I had friends and I enjoyed their company but I liked being by myself also. I had a job as the janitor at the church next to New Hanover High School so during my lunch break from school; I would go over to the church and do assorted chores so I could get home earlier in the afternoon.

For lunch everyday, I would walk down to the Krispy Kreme Doughnut Shop and buy a half-dozen doughnuts. That and a 16-ounce Coke and I was in business! I had a fairly simple life right? School, doughnuts, janitorial chores, school. Then one day, the cycle was shattered.

On an ordinary day, I was heading for the Krispy Kreme with nothing on my mind and nothing in my belly (kind of the way I was after eating half a dozen doughnuts).

I walked into the doughnut shop and there stood behind the counter a beautiful young woman! She was a new waitress and very enthusiastic! I looked at her smiling face, gave her my order and when I paid for the doughnuts, she curtsied as she said, “Thank you.” She was pretty!

I forgot about her though. I had doughnuts and a Coke. What more could a boy want? I was soon to find out what a boy, a teenage boy wanted.

The next day it was the same routine. There was school, lunch break and on my way to the doughnut shop. I walked in… and she was standing there with this big mischievous smile on her face and a bag of doughnuts in her hand. She said, "Six crullers right?" I stood there with the change rattling in my hand, very dumbfounded and said, "Right." I gave her the money, she said, “Thank you” and I left smiling also.

I walked about a block back toward my lunchtime chores thinking how sweet it was that she had my order ready and how pretty she was. Then I looked down at the bag of doughnuts in my hand and saw a phone number on the bag. Her phone number!

Now in high school, I was not naïve about the birds and the bees or the relationship between men and women…I WAS STEWWPID!

This older woman wanted me and she must have known I was stupid yet she wanted ME. I was going to learn about the birds and the bees, about the relationship between men and women from a beautiful older woman who wanted to teach me. A woman of the world! An experienced woman!
I would be the envy of my peers! Girls would notice my savoir-faire. I was bound for glory!!!!
Then it hit me. I was beginning to realize what all of this meant. I hadn't expected this attention, this tutoring. It was all happening too fast. This was too much, too soon! My head was spinning and my vision began to blur. I felt weak in my knees and it was suddenly getting dark. All this was happening while I was walking back to my job. I thought I was going to pass out so I grabbed a tree and tried to compose myself.

Now about this time, my older sister and some of her friends drove by on their way to lunch. They saw me and one of them said, "Penny, what is your brother doing standing there hugging that tree?" She didn't even look up. Her reply was, "He's seventeen! He's an idiot! Leave him alone."

I somehow made my way back to the church where I worked and I ate the doughnuts in the bag but I don't remember tasting anything. I was looking at the phone number and feeling excited and frightened about how my life was going to change.

Then I got scared! I was scared to call the number. I didn’t know her name but I had her phone number, proof positive she wanted me. Still I needed to know more. I decided I needed to know where she lived. Perhaps I needed to find out an impression of her from the look of her house. To make sure a motorcycle gang didn't live there and that she wasn't the leader's "main squeeze". I was uneducated in affairs of the heart. What was I going to do?

I decided I could look her number up in the phone book and get an address that way. It WAS a long shot. She may have an unlisted number. I was determined however to try. I decided I would start at the beginning and check every number in the Wilmington phone book until I found her phone number or got to the end of the book.

I got the phone book, opened it the page one and began going down the list of numbers. To my amazement, on the first page…on the first column… halfway down… was her number.

I said out loud, "THIS IS IT!" I ran my trembling finger over to the name and address. It was the ACE RED TOP CAB COMPANY. In a split second I came back to the real world. I realized what I was seeing. Someone needing a taxi had called information for the number and written it on the closest piece of paper which happed to be a doughnut bag. This bag became my doughnut bag.

All my dreams and fantasies evaporated like a puff of smoke and I was still STUPID about the birds and the bees, about women and I would remain that way a while longer.

That older woman made an impact on my life she never realized. I felt foolish, humble and safe again. Sometimes when I get too cocky, I think about the older woman and I remember how human I really am and this valuable lesson I learned so easily.

Let's look on the bright side! The lesson could have been much harder to learn. The phone number (which I was so determined to find) instead of being the Ace Red Top Cab Company could have belonged to the ZEBRA TAXI SERVICE!

Phil Brady

The Circle of Life

I would like to tell you about Bob. Bob is my lovely wife Patty’s brother. I have listened to stories of Bob and one story in particular has given me a great idea. When Bob turned 40, he ran forty miles on his fortieth birthday. I was impressed. Now he didn't run 40 miles all at once. He got up before the crack of dawn and he ran about 10 miles before breakfast.

He had a good hearty meal, cooled down and then took off around 9:30 and ran another 6 miles. By Noon, he had run a distance of 16 miles. In the early afternoon, he took a short nap, handled a few errands and took off on another 10 miler. At ten o'clock that night, Bob was running and by midnight he had accomplished his goal of forty miles on his fortieth birthday.

Now his family thought he was crazy, insane, out of his tree for wanting to run forty miles in one day at the age of forty. I didn't think he was crazy. I saw Bob's vision. I saw the power of multiplying 40 with 40, the exponential power of stacking numbers. It causes forces, which are rarely understood to align for a release of energy greater than the input. It’s like all the planets lining up and pulling their gravitational fields together. The mind, body and spirit connect and not just with a slender thread but a wide pipeline to exchange information.

Just because we cannot explain something doesn't mean we cannot take advantage of it. Bob understood this and he was able to capitalize on it. I have thought about Bob's achievement and it has inspired me to do the same. I want to seize this power of aligning numbers to achieve my full potential. I have set a goal for myself and I want to share this goal with you.

But I’m not turning 40, I’m turning 50. On my Fiftieth birthday, I’m not running 40 miles. On my Fiftieth birthday, I am going to Krispy Kreme and I am going to eat 50 doughnuts. That’s right, 50 doughnuts!

Now I am not going to eat them all at once. I am going to start off with a dozen… and a half gallon of milk. Then I am quietly going to doze off in a sugar coma and have a nice nappy. After the initial dozen and doze, I may eat a half dozen with a cup of coffee. I will walk around the building and maybe go to over to the mall for a few minutes. It's going to be a great day!

I was telling a friend of mine about my plan and she said, "Let me know what day you're going to do this and I will come by and have a doughnut with you." Many other people have said the same thing. Now my big concern is traffic flow in and around the Krispy Kreme. Do we need a shuttle service from the mall? This thing is growing exponentially. Do you see the numbers at work?

Now I can't just go to Krispy Kreme and sit down and eat 50 doughnuts. This takes strategy. It takes training. Strategy is the pacing. How many per hour? How many bites per doughnut? This is not a place for children or the weak.

As I begin to train, I may start off with a dozen a day and work up to eating two to three dozen a day. This is really a summer time sport but I need to do this in January so training, diet and exercise need to be planned for the winter.

I hope you will wish me well in my quest for the fifty on my Fiftieth. You are all invited to come to Krispy Kreme on South College Road on January 5th, to join me in one of the sweetest pleasures of life. If there is something better than a Krispy Kreme doughnut, frankly I don’t want to know about it!

Now what have I really been talking about? What is the message here? Is it about doughnuts? It could be? Is it just for fun? It could be that too. But it could also be about taking an event that many people do not want to think about and anticipating it, celebrating it, looking forward to it. I hope to create (in my birthday extravaganza) a way to rejoice in the things we cannot stop, like aging.

To make fun what is considered ordinary or what we consider a “reluctant milestone”. This brings me to my slogan for next year, “I'm damn near fifty and I've got the empty doughnut boxes to prove it!"

As the milestones come in our life, let's prepare and embrace them with gusto! Let's look forward to every day, every birthday.

· Don't despair about what you didn't do.
· Reflect on what you did and what you have learned.
· If you do that, what you didn't do is now what you have left to do.

Life is a gift. It is a sweet gift to be savored.

And so is a doughnut.

Footnote: I wrote this in 2001 a couple of years before turning 50. My wife and I had lots of fun talking about this “speech” I gave to my Toastmasters International club. When I turned 50, my lovely wife Patty threw me a surprise birthday party at Krispy Kreme with a “cake” made up of 50 doughnuts of different colors and toppings. We all wore the paper Krispy Kreme hats and it was great! Phil.