The Large Man Chronicles

Someone recently wrote a ‘Large Man Chronicle’ about a wedding. I’m pretty sure it was me.

Since that wedding, I have ministered another one, and it was amazing as well. And now I think I’m addicted. Hello, my name is The Large Man, and I’m a joy junkie.

This is a new condition for me. Instead of focusing on joy, most of my life has been about grudges, bitterness, and animosity. Those emotional reactions take MUCH less time than consideration, forgiveness and understanding. I can become angry and bitter in a matter of micro-seconds… and I can hold on to those emotions for years. It’s AWESOME! But kindness and understanding can take me a couple of minutes to germinate and grow… and then those feelings become quite fleeting. They usually escape me by the next time I see Peyton Manning in a commercial.

Love, joy, and general celebration are things I’m going to seek out on a more regular basis. I’m even considering being a participant in random acts of kindness and being more considerate of people going through personal hardships.  I’m having thoughts about leaning towards forgiveness and understanding and away from grudges, bitterness, and animosity. It’s going to be a struggle for me, but I feel like the Universe is pushing me in that direction.

This new Large Man revelation is born from the fact that I haven’t attended a lot of weddings in the last several years, so attending, and helping with the ceremony, sorta augments and personalizes all the accompanying goodness of the event.  However, in the last several years, I have had a lot of arguments and confrontations, been a victim of crime, watched a lot of ‘Yellowstone’, been called bad names, gotten some speeding tickets… and have been generally pissed off… a lot. Furthermore, although there haven’t been many weddings, I have been to quite a few funerals and “Celebrations of Life”. It’s a bad ratio.

I’ve written about this before, but yeah, that ratio needs to change… the weddings a person attends should outnumber funerals they attend by at least three to one. That should be some kind of federal law. Nobody dances at funerals. In moments of anger, a lot of people say, “I will dance at their funeral!”, but I’ve never seen anybody actually do it.

I’ve never seen anybody dance at a Celebration of Life, either. Probably because it’s awkward, and usually the people at the celebration are old; bad hips, bad knees, messed up or missing teeth, bad breath, incontinence, and all that other stuff that affect us once we hit 35. Old people don’t dance very well. I know I don’t. But still… if you think about it, if it’s called a “Celebration”, we should ignore all our physical maladies, and we should probably dance. I went to one of those a few months ago, and I know for a FACT, that the person we were celebrating would have loved it if we danced.

I’m giving all my Large Man Chronicle fans permission, today, RIGHT NOW; when I am a heap of ashes in a faded blue Adidas shoebox, or a rusty old Maxwell House coffee can, if you happen to be in the vicinity of whatever Mrs. Large Man and the Large Kids decide to do, I want you to dance. No matter what it’s called: a funeral, a Bon Voyage, a Good Riddance Event, or a Celebration of Life… please dance. Turns out, dancing is fun! Somehow, I’ve forgotten about that.

At my death event, I want someone to play ‘Let’s Get it On’ by Marvin Gaye, followed up by ‘Dim All the Lights’ by Donna Summer. That will start y’all out nice and slow to warm up those joints, but then you’ll finish strong with a nice & easy, but still butt shaking fast song. I want you to put those walkers and canes in the corner and get friggin’ jiggy!! Metaphorically speaking, all of my lights will have been dimmed, so Donna Summers’ greatest tune will be apropos.

What songs would you want played at your Celebration? Please reply in the comment section, because I want to build a set list.

I think one of the things about dancing is that it creates joy by a kind of osmosis. Even if you’re not dancing, watching other people dance makes one happy… or at least it should. I didn’t dance at the last two weddings I attended (except for the slow jams), because of old football injuries and my shitty outlook on life and humanity at the time. (Like I said earlier, though, I’m making some changes). But even with sore joints and a bad attitude, I still truly enjoyed watching my wife and all the other moms out there shaking their grove thang to AC/DC, Def Leppard, Shania and all the “rump shakers” of their youth.

The kids (“young adults” is more respectful and a better descriptor, but they’re always gonna be kids to me) all danced to their current, more hip hop leaning jams, and once that started, they stayed on the floor all night… both weddings. It was cool. The energy, fun and the laughter and the JOY… and the CELEBRATION was as infectious as the Ebola virus with almost none of those troublesome and annoying internal bleeding symptoms and fatalities. It’s been too long since I’ve been in a gaggle of that much positive and joyful energy. I can’t even remember the last time… had to be during the Johnson administration.

To be honest, I never really liked dancing, even when I was young, handsome, and flexible… or at least when I was young. Back then, I danced a lot. My friends and I hung out at dance clubs in those days because that was the best way to meet girls, and even though I did not particularly care for dancing, I liked meeting girls, so I made the sacrifice.

Dancing back then was a mating ritual, as pure in nature (although much less graceful) as the dancing that swans do during mating season. I’m pretty sure swans mate for life, so I wonder if like after the fifth or sixth year, they dance a little less passionately. The (new) romantic in me hopes that’s not the case, and now, the new dancer in me will be looking for it! If I see the swans slacking off, I’m gonna put on some AC/DC, ‘Shook Me All Night Long’ and inspire them to seek out the joy of their spring ritual… to celebrate life, and their love, and just dance, dance, dance!!

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you Large Man readers! I’m thankful that you give me a voice.

Big Love & See you next year!