I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Author: Sheila Morris

  • Chances Are…


    When I woke up early this morning and couldn’t go back to sleep, I lay in bed and thought about the million tasks we have to accomplish next month to get moved out of our Texas house that we recently sold – somewhat out of the blue.  This stream of consciousness led me down the memory lane to a post I’d written here about Second Chances.

    I found it in the archives for September, 2012 and  re-read it and decided it was a little over the top because I devoted so much time talking about the “epistemology” of second chances.  Seriously, what was that about?  Clearly no one gives a hoot or a holler about that word anymore.

    However, I hit the “re-blog” button and planned to edit the re-blog but alas, apparently this isn’t possible.  Second Chances was in cyberspace once again – quite in keeping with its title.

    For those of you who are my best followers and who read it before I could figure out how to retrieve and edit, thank you very much for indulging my Big Word Fantasies.  For those of you who just tuned in and have a burning interest in epistemology, please do take the time to visit the archives and the post.

    What I intended to say is that I have been extraordinarily lucky to have had second chances to reconnect with my family and friends in Texas since we bought our home on Worsham Street in March, 2010.  I’ve shared more holidays, birthdays, domino-playing days and nights, barbecue brisket, bourbon, Tex-Mex, margaritas, Lone Star First Saturdays, wine festivals, bluebonnet pastures, cookie walks, cemetery crawls, country music, front-porch rocking and visiting, bird watching and driving back country roads in the past four years with cousins and old friends than in the previous forty years.  Yee Haw – I even got used to wearing cowboy boots and hats again.

    I also found that taking these second chances gave me new first ones, too.  Living on Worsham Street in the little town of Montgomery was a slice of American life I’d lost faith in somewhere along the way.  My neighbors in the 600 block of Worsham became dear friends who reminded me that community and family are not abstract concepts but people who love and support each other in good and bad times.  I find that a message of hope for our country and our world.

    I’ve added Rule Number Six to the five rules I made up in that September, 2012 post:  Don’t confuse your second chances with your first choices or your first choices may become your second chances.

    Life is tricky, ain’t it?

  • I’m a Believer


    Valentine’s Day…love…flowers…love songs…long walks holding hands…movies with happy endings…lingering looks…Hallmark cards…chocolates…romance.

    I’m a believer – not a trace of doubt in my mind. I’m in love…and I couldn’t leave her if I tried.

    Neil Diamond wrote and recorded the song I’m a Believer in 1966 but The Monkees version is the one I sometimes hum and occasionally even remember the words to actually sing it out loud by myself.  It’s also the finale number for the first Shrek movie and I like to think of DonKEY singing it with such gusto and True Love victorious in the hearts of Shrek and Fiona.  I thought for sure they lived happily ever after until I saw Shrek movie #2 followed by Shrek movie #3.  That was a couple with relationship issues.

    Alas, all relationships have issues because life moves around and through us like the plight of the Prince who longed to make Fiona his bride so he could rule the Kingdom.  He tried and he tried but Fiona’s True Love for Shrek ruled instead.

    Teresa treated me to a Burlesque Show at a local theater for Valentine’s night, and it turned out to be an eventful evening.  The show was entertaining with a great emcee and talented performances and, well, lots of Burlesque complete with colorful feathers and other cleverly placed teasers on the scantily clad actors.  Oh, my.

    If we had just gone home after the show, we would have missed the drama that was even more fun.  Think about our truck keys locked in the ignition in a dark parking lot and then think no cell phones because each of us thought the other brought one.  Now picture the kindness of a stranger who drove me home to get a spare truck key while he dropped Teresa at the car of the friends we were meeting for dessert after the Burlesque show – the friends who had almost given up hope on us since we had no way to call them.

    Then imagine my driving in Teresa’s car to meet all of them at a restaurant which was still serving at that hour of the night and feeling relieved to have resolved the locked key dilemma only to get a text message from our Canterbury Road neighbor on the newly retrieved cell phone that says: Did you feel the earthquake?  The TV news says it was 5.4 on the scale.  Sounded like the roar of a plane falling from the sky.

    Seriously?  Yes, and we must have been the only four people in South Carolina who didn’t feel the earth move.  Not even our dogs were wigged at the earthquake by the time we made it home on Valentine’s night.

    Life often interferes with our plans, but True Love learns to roll with it and laugh at the follies we create for ourselves.  If we believe, not even an earthquake can shake us.

  • Take this Job and Shove It


    Yesterday I stopped to buy gas at a local Circle K convenience store not very far from our house.  Since I can rarely buy gas without buying a Mounds candy bar, I walked inside while the gas pumped on its own – just in time to hear the following conversation between the cashier and her Budweiser beer delivery man:

    Beer Man to Cashier: “How’s it going today?”

    Cashier to Beer Man: “About like it always goes.  Boss already showed up today to complain about something.  I wanted to tell him to take this job and shove it.”

    Beer Man to Cashier: “Hey, maybe I can get you a job working with us.  I hear we got openings.”

    Cashier to Beer Man: “No way. On my next job I don’t want no responsibility for nothing.  I don’t want to talk to nobody.  I just want to clock out at 5 o’clock every day and go home.”

    And on that cheerful note, she turned to me and smiled and asked me if I wanted to pay for the candy separately.  Which I did.

    On the drive back to the house, I thought about jobs, careers and the whole notion of the importance of Work in our everyday lives.  I don’t think much about my prior career with numbers anymore, but this was the second time in 48 hours I’d been reminded of my working years that numbered as many as Susan Lucci’s on All My Children.  That would be 41.

    (Note to self:  You are also working as a writer and have been for six additional years.  The fact that you don’t consider these years as “really” a job might go a long way toward explaining why you have produced no income.  Just sayin’.  Food for thought.)

    During the Super Bowl two nights ago I saw Paul Allen hoist the Lombardi Trophy as the owner of the Seattle Seahawks NFL Championship Team and wondered what rock I had lived under and how long I’d lived under it which must be the only possible reason I never connected the dots until Sunday night that this was indeed the same Paul Allen who was Bill Gates’s co-founder of Microsoft.   Seattle.  Microsoft.  Bill Gates.  Paul Allen.  Gazillionaires.

    This moment of serendipity led me down a winding  memory lane of my pre-existing condition as a financial advisor who sold individual stocks – among other investments – to qualified clients.  I worked for a firm that had offices in smaller cities throughout the USA and advertised as the firm that brought Wall Street to Main Street.  I was working for that firm in 1998 when Paul Allen bought the controlling interest in a cable company called Charter Communications (NASDAQ symbol CHTR).  He and I met right there at the corner of Main Street and Wall Street.

    Because of my confidence in the potential Midas touch of Paul Allen I sold CHTR to a bunch of people – usually as a stock of above average risk with above average growth potential and almost always as just one holding of a diversified portfolio.  Almost always.

    But Sunday night I remembered the one exception I made when I recommended it to a high school classmate who had never bought a stock in her life.  I saw her at a class reunion in 2000 (remember the Roaring 2000s?)  and she asked me if I could recommend a  stock she could buy that would make a lot of money.  I recommended CHTR and she bought it.  Hope filled the air.

    Unfortunately, CHTR was the one blight on a Paul Allen lifetime of successful endeavors in business, sports, the arts, philanthropy – you name it, he made money and gave it away by the billions.  CHTR peaked at $27.75 in November, 1999 and was probably about that price when I sold it to my clients including my high school girlfriend.  By 2002, it fell to under $1 a share.  In February, 2009 the company filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and in November of that year canceled its obligations to its shareholders.  Ouch.

    My recollections of Charter Communications reminded me that while many of my days in financial services were good ones, even great ones, I did have times when I shared the opinion of David Allan Coe’s lyrics in Take this Job and Shove It…I ain’t working here no more.

    Breathes there the person with soul so dead who never to herself has said, This job sucks.  But we persevere and we hang in there for all the right reasons and even a few wrong ones and may think to ourselves on any given day: On my next job I don’t want no responsibility and I don’t want to talk to nobody.

    Oh gosh, I may have found that job.

    P.S. Paul Allen hung on to a small equity stake in CHTR after its bankruptcy and since 2011 the return on the stock has been 100.7%.  His stake in the company is now worth $535 million dollars.  The closing price today (02-05-14) was $137.35 per share.

  • Somebody STOP Me!


    My apologies to my followers in 61 countries around the world (but especially to my top five followers for 2013: Wayside Artist, Bob Lamb the novelist, coyotero2112, peacelovegreatcountrymusic and currentdescendent) who have come to expect a certain quality of thoughtful essays on topics of general interest to my readers.  Thank you for your comments and encouragement as we make our way together through the confusion we recognize as our particular slice of life.

    I felt the “thoughtful commentary” slipping a bit in my last post about the movies, but I moved gaily forward anyway and concluded my ramblings with the underlying themes of the films as a rationale for the previous post.  I have to say the response has been underwhelming which ought to make a blogger return to dance with the one who brung her.  Not so fast, my friend.

    Today I sink to a new low, and I admit it before you read another word.  I have to blame my digression from thoughtful commentary on something so I will simply say it’s my time of the year.  The endless annual parade of entertainment Award Shows, Super Bowl, Westminster Dog  Show, the Australian Open Tennis Tournament and the extra overload of the Sochi Winter Olympics this year have combined to conspire against me.  Woe is me.  I have become a Best of the Best junkie.

    Hello, my name is Sheila, and I am a BOTB junkie.  I admit it, and I will rise above it in future thoughtful commentary so forgive me this trespass today as I forgive others who trespass against me.  And you know who you are.

    Earlier this week Meryl Streep was a guest on Ellen.  That’s right.  Meryl Streep who I have loved through almost four decades of filmgoing – from as far back as Kramer vs Kramer and The French Lieutenant’s Woman ( was that really thirty-five years ago?) to August: Osage County as recently as two weeks ago.  Meryl was on the same small screen with my new BFF Ellen de Generes and they were hotter than a two-dollar pistol together.

    Meryl had vacationed in South Africa in 2013 and entertained Ellen with stories from her trip.

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    The conversation took a few turns from the African adventure and wound up in Osage County, Oklahoma.

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    The final segment of the show was typical of Ellen’s poking fun at her guests, and Meryl wasn’t spared.  Ellen asked Meryl to read ordinary cooking recipes as different characters, and the results were hilarious!

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    Oh, how I love women.  Regardless of color, race, sexual orientation, economic circumstances,  spiritual leanings,  religious or political preferences.  Okay – now I have gone too far and tipped the scales into hyperbole on the last two.  I reserve the right of first refusal there.

    As for my personal preferences for women, however, give me funny and liberal thinkers any day of the week over humorless and narrow-mindedness.  This week I was lucky enough to see two of my favorite women interacting in a somewhat unstructured albeit artificial setting, and all I had to do was sit back and enjoy.

    Thoughtful commentary be damned.  Full speed ahead.

  • Let’s Talk Movies


    I’ve been in a movie mood for the last couple of months and attribute the feeling to my perception that the new releases in the late fall are usually the award contenders and I love the Golden Globes and Oscars, SAGs and even the People’s Choice Awards when my BFF Ellen wins a total of 14 over her career – the last ten years in a row for most popular talk show host.

    The political activist me loves that an open lesbian is a woman of the people, by the people and for the people.  If you ever doubt who she is and why she is so highly regarded, watch her show for a week.  I guarantee you’ll be a believer in her populist appeal.  But enough about Ellen.

    Let’s talk movies.  The intensity of the suspense in Gravity drove me into therapy.  Well, I’m not sure about the timing exactly, but I am in therapy and when I saw George Clooney lost in space and Sandra Bullock left alone to navigate a large can containing herself through a gazillion miles of treacherous atmosphere toward earth, I admit I decided right there in the movie theater that I’d needed therapy for a while and now was a good time to start. I’d do anything I could do if Sandra Bullock could just make it home.

    Captain Phillips was also spellbinding and nerve-wracking in its own way, and whenever a movie is based on a true story, I watch in a slightly different mindset.  Tom Hanks was terrific as usual, and the supporting cast superb.  It wasn’t your typical swashbuckling pirate movie of the Golden Years of Hollywood, but I thought it was a super action movie that told a powerful story of an incident that received worldwide attention as the Americans attempted to rescue one of our own civilian sailors from Somali pirates and  bring him home to his family.

    In another Tom Hanks film based on a true story, Saving Mr. Banks, Tom played Walt Disney who tried valiantly for twenty years to convince PL Travers to release the movie rights to her Mary Poppins books.  Emma Thompson played the reclusive Ms. Travers who resisted the idea of leaving her comfortable home in England to make the pilgrimage to Hollywood to participate in the production of her stories by a man whose major claim to fame was a mouse.  A mouse that roared, however – and a movie that entertained.

    Another movie based on a true story is Philomena, and I wanted to see this movie for the same reason I go to see many flicks: the star.  Judi Dench is one of my all-time favorite actresses, and I can’t decide if it’s because I think she’s such a great actress or because she looks like my paternal grandmother Ma.  Regardless of the reason for my attraction, I was happy to watch her give another excellent performance in this movie about a woman who searches for a son she was forced to give up as a young teenager in a time when options were few for young single mothers who were good Catholic girls.  Her urge to reunite with her son drives Philomena to a life-changing adventure that redefines her idea of family.

    Occasionally I go to a movie and when I come out of the theater I think to myself, Wow!  I could go see that picture again.  It was that good.  And guess what?  I’ve had that feeling twice in the past month and through the magic of free passes Teresa earns at work, gift cards at Christmas and the advantages of being a senior citizen – I’ve done just that.  Gone to two movies two times.

    Nebraska was a film I wanted to see because I’d seen the previews at our local indie arts theater, the nickelodeon.  I am a lukewarm Bruce Dern fan and didn’t know  Will Forte or June Squibb so I didn’t go for the stars.  I went for the story.  The difficulties of caring for the elderly in their varying stages of dementia are very real to me as a caregiver who survived five years with an aging mother who was obstinate on her good days and impossible on her bad ones.  I felt for this family and expected to be moved by the motion picture.

    I was moved all right.  I couldn’t remember laughing this much in a long time.  Of course the story was tragic, but the screenplay elevated the tragedy to the glorious comedy that only occurs when we interact with our family, the people we can never really leave because we are forever bound to them by our shared genetics.  Hawthorne, Nebraska was Anysmalltown, USA and the people of the town created a place as real as my hometown of Richards, Texas.  I had been there.  These people were my people.  I would see it again.

    Finally, this past weekend I went to two different local theaters to see the same movie, August: Osage County.  I admit to going primarily to watch two of my favorite women on the silver screen – Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, but I also went for the story.  One  house without air conditioning surrounded solely by the Plains of Oklahoma in a hot August summer contained enough family secrets to capture the undivided attention of  a William Faulkner or Tennessee Williams and it certainly captured mine.  The complex relationships between mothers and their daughters and sons, between husbands and wives,  between sisters and brothers…and everything in-between were fascinating, funny and the performances flawless in a flawed family.  I vowed to stay in therapy.

    As I thought about these movies and why I liked them, I noticed two universal themes.  Home. Family.  For me there are no more powerful words.  No words are more inspirational.  No  words can make me more introspective.  Home. Family. They are words that both comfort and challenge me to be kinder to the people I love.

    As often happens when I sit down to write, I don’t end up at all where I planned to go.  Today I ended up at the movies.  Tomorrow I’ll be on Worsham Street with the Huss Brothers.  Life is good.