Coat

Coat: (n) an outer garment worn for warmth

Is it possible I was allergic? No–that’s not the word.

I certainly couldn’t stand to have a coat on until… well, very recently.

All through my teen years, my mother insisted I wear one to school, and I always removed it within ten feet from the door of our home, convinced, I think, that I would break out in a rash if I continued to wear it.

I don’t know whether it was a case of macho, or whether there was a part of me that believed that only wimps and Mama’s boys wore such outer protection.

In the winter months in Ohio, I went with short sleeves.

I once found a sweater I liked for a while–but then my older brother claimed it as his own and I never saw it again.

There was something powerful about remaining chilly. Even as a man, in the wintertime I would find a sunshiny day and play tennis in shorts and a tank top.

I always loved the question, “Aren’t you cold?”

Hell, no. I’m hot, Mama.

I guess that was the thing. I suppose I was trying to communicate to the females around me that I was a furnace. A blazing fire of love.

Or maybe it wasn’t that at all.

Maybe I hated the confinement. Because I was chubby, coats always fit me like a straight jacket–especially if I zipped them up. They were so tight I felt the garment was holding my organs in.

But of late I have changed my mind. The feeling of warmth coming on your skin, suddenly protecting it from chill and frost–it’s very comforting.

I enjoy it.

But, while wearing a coat, I still feel like Wimpy Boy Billy.

 

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Coaster

Coaster: (n) a small mat placed under a glass to protect the table underneath.

It’s one of those factors that determines whether you are a bungler or a baron.

There are many.

But when you find yourself with a glass of drink and there is a table in front of you, do you procure a coaster so your condensation does not leave a ring on the table, or do you just put your glass down and later act completely bewildered because your hostess or host was offended by your choice?

It’s where we teeter–all human beings teeter between understanding and arrogance.

Often we understand the purpose for matters, yet in our arrogance, we resist performing the courteous function simply because it seems tedious and makes us appear too subservient.

A long time ago I had to decide whether to be a bungler or become a baron. Would I be willing to learn the things that are important to my brothers and sisters, and simply avoid conflict with their tender conscience by doing them? Or would I stubbornly going to insist that it’s a “goddamn free country,” and proceed to take my pet bull off the leash for the latest visit to the china shop?

Coasters are not effeminate.

Coasters are not irrational.

Coasters may not be necessary–but you won’t know until you don’t use one. So why take the risk, especially on the chance that you might unnecessarily offend a friend?

But stubborn we are–all children of Adam and Eve.

Yet, if you want to get back into the Garden, you need to swallow your pride and discover the location of the forbidden apples.

 

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Coast

Coast: (n) the part of the land near the sea; the edge of the land.

It was a Thursday afternoon. (Actually it probably wasn’t a Thursday afternoon, but I needed someplace to start this essay.)

I was twenty years old, had a music group and was gradually starving my way to success. The definition of that process, by the way, is that there may be visible signs of progress in your career, but you’re also about ready to be evicted.

I had spent all of my youth and the beginnings of my adult life living in the midwest and visiting the mid-south. I had no complaints about the region–just felt deprived of the opportunity to go to the coast and see the ocean. Any coast would have been fine, although I did not favor Northern Canada and the Arctic Ocean.

No opportunity came my way to go and view the glorious blue. So finally I just decided to make an opportunity. I scheduled a little coffee-house gig for us in Sarasota, Florida. Matter of fact, I ended up being able to procure three such opportunities on our way down there. This trifecta of bookings was certainly not going to be enough to cover expenses. I didn’t care. I was going to the coast to see the ocean.

Our vehicle was in terrible shape, so on the way there we broke down–once mechanically and twice from bald tires, which finally exhaled all air.

Yet we finally arrived in Sarasota. Breathlessly, with my hand shaking on the steering wheel, I headed off to see the beauty of the ocean, the waves crashing onto the shore.

It was mind-altering, as all new experiences should be. I just sat there with the members of my group, and we stared at it for two hours. I was so excited that I went to a nearby cafe to order some lunch, which considering our budget, consisted of sharing a muffin, a hot dog and a cup of coffee among three people.

All of us were bubbling over with enthusiasm, as we shared with our waitress that we had come all the way from Ohio to Sarasota to see the ocean. Each one of us had a brief testimonial of how much the experience had impacted our life.

The waitress stood and listened patiently, and when we finally fell silent, having completed all of our praise, she quietly deadpanned, “That’s not the ocean. That’s the Gulf of Mexico.”

She walked away, confident of her geography.

I looked at my two comrades. They were just as distressed as I.

Staring out in the distance at the waves, it suddenly seemed meaningless.

Me wept.

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Coarse

Coarse: (adj) rude, crude, or vulgar.

Fortunately for the human race, if for some reason they do not want to deal with your message or the impact of your words, they can either critique your style or claim that your language is coarse and profane.

I have spent the major part of my professional career trying to determine the words that best describe what I’m trying to communicate, and then attempting to slide those cherished words into the body of my work, without being shunned for foul usage.

Honestly, when describing an atrocity and the need for change, the word “darn” does not replace “damn.”

For many years I was critiqued for saying “crap”–but “bullcrap” is not as energetic as “bullshit.”

The purpose of speech is to communicate. The goal of the written word is to impact. And the mission of the visual is to enlighten.

They must be permitted to do their jobs without being censored, or even-tempered.

I happen to agree that the word f-u-c-k is rarely necessary to communicate and certainly should not be overused as an adjective or an adverb.

But even that stipulation carries a bit of fuddy-duddy, which is not necessarily applicable in the pursuit of waking up the sleepy masses.

Having survived a lifetime which has included living in a society where the word “pregnant” could not be uttered on television, to now living in an Internet generation, where temperance is disdained, I am more than happy to put guidelines on my own soul–using an economy of words to justify the heart of the story, without coarsely tainting it with unnecessary emotions which threaten to condemn it.

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Coalesce

Coalesce: (v) come together and form one mass or whole.

“Can you get behind this?”

People are always asking me that. They think they have found a noble cause and they want to enlist my support so as to create the appearance of mass approval

I don’t want to get behind anything.

I don’t like to be pushy, and if you’re standing behind something, you’re always pushing it.

I also don’t like to pull things. If a cause has so much dead weight that it needs to be pulled forward, it probably needs to be taken out behind the barn and shot.

I like to find things that are historically, emotionally, humanly and creatively everlasting, and melt into them.

Yes–coalesce.

Although there is a great struggle to become famous and well-known, the chance of such an event occurring in one’s life is astronomically small. I think the best you can hope for as a voice crying in the wilderness–or as a penner of thoughts–is to be considered an I. R. S. writer. And the I. R. S. stands for “I Read Somewhere.”

Nobody will ever remember it came from me, or you, but they might reference the material in making a point.

In a day and age when we think that peace and good will come from spending money on bombs, it is unlikely that you will find a following of human beings who want to focus on your particular message of cooperation.

But simply deciding to coalesce oneself into great expectations and noble efforts is the best way to pass the time while we either wait for common sense to have its day, or for us to complete the journey… and be recycled into the stardust.

 

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Coal

Coal: (n) a combustible rock consisting of carbonized plant matter

For a season as a young man, I traveled with a gentleman who had a low-budget Las Vegas-type show, and performed at conventions, carnivals and county fairs.

One summer, we were scheduled in a West Virginia mining town for their city-wide carnival, fair and jubilee–all mixed into one. There was no motel in town, so the sponsor found homes for the entertainers to sleep overnight. Most people got to pair off–in other words, two to every house.

Except me.

I ended up driving about seven miles into the hills, and stayed with a family who had a shack that could have been a prop-double for Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter.”

I was still dressed in my stage clothing and upon my arrival, the people stared at me like I had twelve heads. They offered me a meal of brown bread and beans with side-meat and molasses. It was delicious.

But they never stopped peering at me. I was just a kid, so I was really spooked.

I attempted communication. I tried to express interest in coal mining. The only thing I knew about coal was that when I was a boy, my dad had a coal furnace that warmed the loan company we owned. It was my job ever so often to go down and stoke the coal into the furnace. So I had picked up a piece or two and analyzed it. It’s quite an attractive rock. (You can understand that if it got the chance to hang around for several hundred thousand years–how it might become a diamond.)

So ridiculously, and clumsily, I might add–I shared my limited awareness, and even ventured calling it “bituminous” just to show off a bit.

The family had no toleration for my ignorance. Every question I asked was met with a two-word grunted answer. Usually, “Huh. Maybe.”

It was an uncomfortable evening–mainly because I was miserable and felt out-of-place with this common sort.

So imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning to buckwheat pancakes, scrapple and coffee. The mom of the house had also taken an old shirt, sewn up all the holes and presented it to me as a gift.

For you see, while I thought they were giving me a hard time–unwelcome in their home–they, on the other hand, were actually sitting over there, quietly trying to figure out some way to bless the stranger.

That afternoon during our performance, I wore the shirt they darned for me, and the family sat near the front, grinning from ear-to-ear.

It brought me to tears.

I realized that even though I was having a hard time making money, I did not have to live in an old shack and descend into a coal mine, risking my life, to eek out enough money for my beans.

 

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Coagulant

Coagulate: (v) to change a fluid into a solid

Every once in a while, my silly little boy shows up to take over my manly frame.

For what I hope is a brief time, I start thinking like a child or an adolescent instead of taking advantage of the library of my journey.

One day I convinced myself I was having a heart attack. Of course, the more I considered that my heart was being attacked, the more abundantly symptoms leaped to the forefront to do their best imitation, trying to reinforce my foolishness.

Eventually I found it necessary to drive to the emergency room and check in.

Well, nobody questioned my contention because…well, because I’m fat. After all, that’s what fat people do. They eat too much cake and pizza and have heart attacks. Since I wasn’t eating, the possibility of cardiac arrest was available.

So they put me on a treatment while they tried to figure out what to do with me. One of the things they gave me was an anti-coagulant. This is a drug that keeps your blood from clotting. I didn’t think anything about it.

But when it turned out that I had mingled a case of indigestion with an anxiety attack to simulate a cardiac event, they sent me home. They offered one warning: “Keep in mind, if you cut yourself, it’ll be very difficult to stop the bleeding.”

I ignored them.

That evening when I went into my bathroom to shave, I did nick myself. I put a little piece of toilet paper on it, as gents often do, but it continued to bleed down my neck, over and over and over again.

I do not know when it eventually coagulated, because I had to lay down and wrap it in gauze.

Whatever they intended for that particular drug was very effective.

I could not coagulate.

So as it turns out, on that particular day my greatest danger was not having a heart attack, but rather, bleeding to death from shaving.

 

 

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Coach

Coach: (n) a person who teaches and trains the members of a sports team

The same tenacity and grit which is necessary to make one successful can just as easily be used to commence a life of crime.

This is the difficulty the adults in our lives face when they train us, and of course, coach us.

They certainly know that initiative, spunk and creativity are essential for forming the building blocks of a prosperous lifestyle. Yet in the moment, these particular attributes, especially when spoken from the nasally nastiness of adolescence, can be obnoxious.

So our instructors often have to find out whether our conduct, being sweet and kind, is a foretelling of goodness or brain death–and if our unwanted opinions prophesy greatness or the possibility of time spent “upstate.”

Let me give you an example.

During a football game, when we were losing 48 to nothing, I ran to the sideline and said the following to my coach: “Come on, coach! This defense you put together for us is just not working!”

I was fourteen at the time, and he was probably in his mid-twenties, trying desperately to survive the humiliation of being drummed by his rival on this field of debauchery.

I noticed that my coach’s face began to twitch. His eyes expanded. The veins in his head popped out, and his countenance became crimson as he slowly said, “Please sit down. Our defense is fine.”

I noticed that he avoided me for the rest of the game, as I avoided many tackles.

Fortunately, he did not personally address my inadequacies and focus on them because of my snippy, snarky comment. He restrained himself, and therefore, I believe I grew up using my precocious nature for good instead of joining forces with the villains to destroy Batman.

It’s not easy being a coach. You don’t always win, but end up stuck with your team, no matter what the score. You can’t blame them or you look like an idiot. You can’t accuse the referees or you appear to be a sore loser.

All you can do is teach what you know, and hope, by the grace of God, it’s enough.

 

 

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Clutter

Clutter: (n) untidy

It’s all about square footage.

If you’re a person that grew up in a large house with plenty of room to spare, you probably believe that where you place things is not terribly important. After all, there’s always more expanse.

But if you grew up in a house where the walls always seemed to be creeping inward, you quickly understood that you could clutter the room by taking off your coat and laying it on the couch instead of hanging it up.

Perhaps this is why rich people have maids and housekeepers. Having additional living space to clutter, they require assistance about placement and cleanliness.

For many years, I traveled on the road. This required a motel room. You learn very quickly in that space that two towels placed in the wrong location and a pair of shoes discarded in the path, could make the room look a mess and have you tripping and falling flat on your face.

So I do not know whether it’s possible to teach someone who thinks there are unlimited regions for collecting junk that placing things in order simplifies life.

But we all must be honest and admit that we would like to know that we are cluttered–before someone else has to tell us to “straighten up.”

 

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Cluster

Cluster: (n) a group

To anyone under the age of thirty, the word “cluster” is mentally followed by “fuck.”

To anyone over the age of thirty, that particular interpretation may be bumped by the consideration of peanut or almond candy.

Because I’m writing and interacting with people of all ages, I must be careful not to use words like “cluster.”

A “cluster of ideas,” which might be included in one of my essays, would cause the millennials to giggle, and those older folks to salivate for chocolate.

Some words have worn out their usefulness, or have been so tainted or tinted that they cannot be slid into normal conversation.

Such is the word cluster.

So even though I may be tempted to refer to a “cluster of activities” or a “cluster of problems” or a “cluster of opportunities,” I must catch myself–because cluster has already established its mission and is not allowed to take on any new significance.

 

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