Annotations In The Great Void

Recently, in a moment absolutely overflowing with sanity, I suddenly realized that I’ve become a man of a certain age. And, with this distinction comes a responsibility to myself, an implicit obligation of accountability. Words like ‘legacy’ occupy a new prominence within my thought patterns. What have I done in my life that makes me stand out in a crowd? I think it was at precisely that moment I realized I am a living, breathing footnote.

Six decades… a fair amount of time, in human terms, I think. I briefly considered computing the total amount of oxygen I’d consumed during my lifetime, and the resultant amount of carbon dioxide, but since neither would offer me the prospect of any sort of distinction among my peers, I abandoned it. After all, I didn’t force myself to hold my breath for long periods of time in hopes of conserving precious oxygen or producing less carbon dioxide… I’m not a strict conservationist by habit or theory. I’ll never go down in the annals of history as The American Who Inhaled Less Oxygen Than Any Other Sixty-Year-Old Man… but it won’t be because I didn’t think about it.

In fact, nothing of a physical nature causes me to stand out in such a way that a stranger might look at a photograph of me lined up next to a cross-section of similarly aged males and say, “Oh, look… there’s Bob Church, world’s (fill in the blank) man.”

I’ve neither held public office nor desired to hold public office, my nearly two weeks in graduate school reminded me that the world has plenty of ruminant nutritionists, and fifteen years of Catholic indoctrination failed to convince me that God called me to the priesthood (sorry, Mom).

In high school, I graduated four students south of the cut-off line for Top 10%, which basically meant that if I could somehow get away with murdering Sylvia Grigsby, Dick Salmon, Cynthia Jean Morrow and Lawrence Brandywine, my counselors might recommend me for the Caldwell Grant, the $500 work-study stipend available to freshmen in good standing at Mundane State College. Oh, wait, I would have had to take the SAT’s to qualify… never mind.

Once, when I applied for a job as an ‘on-air personality’ at a local FM-radio station in Denver, the station manager interviewed me and stated that while I had a face superbly crafted for radio, my unfortunate stutter, lisp, low IQ and lack of personality tended to make him think I had no real prospects for success as KQFM’s new all-night disc-spinner. Evidently it is not enough to be able to rhythmically thump your chest in a manner that sounds like helicopter blades turning in the background… who knew?

This might have gotten some people down… but not me. I did what any lower middle class, under-educated, testosterone-rich male with no job and absolutely no direction in life might have done… I got married! And, after five kids and more than thirty years of keeping her mouth shut when common sense would urge her to complain to anyone who’d listen, she’s proved, if nothing else, that she has a huge heart and a well-developed sense of humor.

Yes, I’m no more than a footnote in the eyes of the world. I recall the old Shakespearian adage, “Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them”, to which I would add “and some, while technically being able to spell ‘great’, hold no real conception of the word’s meaning outside the clichéd version used every twelve seconds on SportsCenter”.

To my fellow footnotes: I hear ya, pal.

P.S.-- Although I was a 10-handicap golfer at best, I'm the best damn plumb bob putter on the planet. Does the Guinness Book of World Records have a category for that?