I've Started Making Funny Noises Again

No, it isn't that I've got a pinhole leak. I. am not. a balloon. (eeeeeeeeeeeeeee.)

When I was younger, still in my teens, I was a pretty happy guy. Life was good: I was healthy and good looking, well liked and widely regarded as smart, funny and wise. Basically, I was so pleased with myself and my life that I couldn't contain it, and I'd take the stairs two-at-a-time, every time, singing "Bing-bing-bing" with each footfall. Heading DOWN stairs, it was one at a time, but with a rhythm: "Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump." Except the sound effects department in my head had me chiming, "Ba-dink" or "ga-bink", depending on my mood...which was nearly always good.

I'd sing for no apparent reason, sometimes with nonsensical lyrics, made up as the song progressed. Lyrics like:

"Sam and Janet Evening,
you will see a stranger...
you will see a stranger
who holds a brown balloon."

That last line would sometimes be "who acts like a baboon," or even, "who's crazy as a loon."

The words weren't as important as the expression of joy that drove them.

Then, for a long time, I was silent. I don't even know what got in the way of my happiness, and I can't point to a particular memory of discovering that the sound effects department had closed up shop. I just know that for nigh on twenty years, there have been no weird noises emanating unbidden from me.

Well, no happy weird noises, anyway. By the time you get to be my age, you can't escape weird noises. But that's a completely different subject.

In the last few days, the noises have come back. I am singing nonsensically again. Life is fun and good.

I have no idea why. My life has not drastically changed for the better. I am not in love.

Or, maybe I am in love. With myself. Maybe that's what this is. Maybe, after years of feeling darkly D-pressed and O-pressed, and taking responsibility for things I shouldn't, I'm finally accepting that I'm a good guy. I'm smart, talented, wise and sometimes even funny. Maybe it's none of that and it's just that without really meaning to or even realizing I was doing it, I've finally decided to like myself again.

There is other evidence of that...I haven't been doing a thing about my weight this summer. In fact, if anything, I've been doing all the wrong things: fast food, no exercise and ice cream every night! (WOO HOO!) Somehow, I've managed to lose weight, though. This morning, I put on a pair of pants that because the two sides of the fly seemed to be no longer on speaking terms, had been relegated for the last six months to the darkest recesses of my closet...that area I think of as the Optimism Rack, the clothes I'll hopefully someday get to wear again. Never mind that they will be hopelessly out of style. And yet...I wore a pair of Chinos to work today that I thought would never again grace my large-ish, somewhat hairy backside.

Clearly, there's an energy thing going on. The changes in my life that began as entirely attitudinal are now manifesting themselves as a smaller waistline and a stream of goofy noises. Who knows where it goes from here? I'm not terribly inclined to put much thought into it.

I'm just happy.

Ba-dink.