On my music blog (A Sound Day) I had several guest writers talk about songs that had a good philosophy for life in them. They came up with some great ideas, like a country tune, “Humble and Kind” whose title kind of says it all, or the Monty Python laugh-along “Always Look On The Bright Side of Life.” Although performed in a rather ironic way in a comedy movie, the sentiment actually helps a lot if you put it in play routinely! I opted for Steve Winwood’s “While You See A Chance (Take It)”. When opportunity comes knocking, you’d better be ready to answer the door and hope that you didn’t leave the “do not disturb” sign on it last night! I’ve never been one to take many big gambles; psychologists probably would call me “risk aversive.” But I’ve taken a few big ones in my life, like moving thousands of miles away from home, and every now and then take much smaller ones. One came to mind last week. A simple one that didn’t change my life and only had three dollars on the table, but it was worthwhile. I read a book I knew nothing about.
There was a table of final clearout items at the local bookstore a few weeks back, and nothing seemed to be priced over $3. I ended up grabbing a music bio which was great and a book of the best short stories of O. Henry. I’d heard the name O.Henry before, and not just at the chocolate bar stand of the grocery checkouts. But I knew nothing about him. In fact I was surprised to find that he was American, and wrote mainly in the 20th Century. If I had guessed prior, I might have thought he was more a contemporary of Shakespeare. So I glanced at the book, saw that it had dozens of short stories in it – always a good entry point to a new author; if the story stinks, you’ve only wasted time reading a few pages instead of several hundred – and figured, “why not?”
I got around to reading it in the last couple of weeks, and was somewhat impressed. Turns out this guy was famous and quite well-paid in the early 1900s and spent a lot of time not that far away from me, in Texas. He also was a New York denizen and wrote stories of the city from there. That in itself was rather unusual and cool; not that many writers go back and forth between tales of the Old West, cowboys, Indians, ranches and pretty senoritas from south of the border and then shift to ones of what were in the day, the most modern, cosmopolitan tales of romance and nightlife. Authors like John Grisham and Stephen King are very good and experts in their own genres (legal thrillers for John, horror for Stephen) but I find I am most interested in them when they turn a corner and write something different, like about growing up in the rural south for the former, or baseball or even the act of writing itself, for the latter.
It turned out I even knew one tale in it, “The Gift of the Magi”. From scanning his titles available, I’m probably not unique in that… it seems his most famous one. In it, a young couple are poor and find themselves without money to buy gifts for one another at Christmas. So, you guessed it, she goes out and gets her long, beautiful hair cut at a wig place to make money and he sells his gold pocketwatch, his proud inheritance. She buys him a platinum chain for the watch; he buys her an expensive hair brush and hair care kit. Seems like it might have been adapted into one of the less spooky Twilight Zones.
Anyhow, to my surprise, I actually enjoyed the ranch stories more than the city ones. I wouldn’t have expected that, as I never was much of a fan of Westerns in movie form. But his stories were populated by colorful characters and just seemed a little less predictable than the others. Both types contained quite a few entertaining, at times thought-provoking little stories. And most had a surprise twist ending. Turns out long before M. Night Shymalan made us jump in surprise when we realized why Bruce Willis could talk so well with the child who sees dead people, O.Henry had found that a secret of a memorable story was to hit the reader with an ending they didn’t see coming.
So, not a life-changing book for me, nor an event of huge consequence. But just one more little chance taken that worked out well. And a reminder once more for you just as much as me, as Mr. Winwood sang “while you see a chance, take it!”.
How about you? From a book you wouldn’t have usually picked up to a holiday in a brand new continent – have you taken any big risks that paid off? Or even tiny ones that stand out in your memory? Sometimes the biggest risk that pays off is just getting rid of that “do not disturb” sign!
Everydave Life 