If I were to take up Taylor Swift‘s “Fortnight” challenge and put together an online posting showing two weeks’ worth of relevant video clips of my life, I would run the risk it would be dominated by moments showing me sitting in the waiting rooms of doctors’ offices.
“Oh, look, there he is showing his insurance cards!”
How exciting.
Or, my moments of mention might include picking twigs up from the lawn or washing the outside of windows that haven’t been cleaned since the winter season began. Maybe a moment among my two weeks’ worth would show me shopping for groceries, standing near the freezer section, looking pensive, holding different brands of thin-crust, “supreme” pizzas in each hand, trying to decide whether to buy Red Baron or Newman’s Own.
Are my old-guy ordinary activities challenging enough?
If, so, I can post a nifty couple of seconds of me foolishly attempting to carry two chairs instead of one up the steps to the deck from the garage, getting ready for barbecue season.
Viewers likely would be enthralled with my attempt to save time, perhaps not even stopping to think that at my age on a Saturday I’ve got more than enough time to make two trips.
Gary Brown:I was this close to being a Major Leaguer
I could take a fortnight to carry chairs – a chair a day – and still have plenty of time left over to haul out the little tables that go between them.
In case you are one of the few people who haven’t been told by the news media, a child, or a grandchild, Taylor Swift dropped her avidly awaited new album “The Tortured Poet Department” earlier this month and fans of the singer started taking up the “Fortnight” challenge that the Grammy winner referred to in a social media post.
Since “Fortnight” was the album’s lead single and a fortnight is 14 days, Swift asked fans to post 14 special moments in their lives.
I didn’t realize how mundane life is for me and my loved one until I tried deciding what moments I might highlight if I accepted the “Fortnight” challenge. Fourteen is a big number of activities I would consider special.
Taylor Swift gets a kiss on the cheek from professional football player Travis Kelce and my loved one gets sprayed in the face with water while we’re washing our cars because I’m not bright enough to look to see if she’s cleaning a fender on the other side of the hood.
Perhaps it will look more romantic in a video clip than it sounds in real life. I recall she didn’t think it professed much love at the time.
The problem is we simply don’t live the lives of a pro athlete or pop singer. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just mostly an uninteresting thing for others to watch. Would you want to see my loved one weeding her garden or me loading the SUV with bags full of our trash?
Is yard work and trash removal in any way fulfilling or just embarrassingly illustrative of the tedious level to which our ordinary daily lives have sunk?
I didn’t know the “Fortnight” challenge would turn out to be this depressing when I considered doing it. The music sounded pretty good.
Maybe my “Fortnight Challenge” posting needs music. I could use Taylor Swift’s music from her album – “Fortnight” itself – or assign my own songs to serve as background music to my montage of moments.
For the moment that I am seen in a video clip falling asleep watching a Guardians-Yankees game – more like an hour in the total nap – with my mouth so wide-open snoring that I could catch a foul ball in it, I might use the old standard “Take Me Out To The Ball Game.”
The clip of me eating dry cereal out of a bowl in the morning while doing an online word puzzle on my phone with my loved one could be accompanied by the shout, “Alexa, play cereal advertisement jingles!”
I could use “9 to 5” for video of me working outside in the yard, although that seems like a waste of a song since nobody will be able to hear it over the noise made by the lawn mower, leaf blower and hedge trimmer.
And if I sit down in the evening in a comfortable chair on the deck, drinking an iced tea and snacking on potato chips, watching birds and squirrels while thinking of, well, nothing in particular, Otis Redding’s “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay” comes to mind.
I have other moments available for using in my “Fortnight” challenge posting. Vacuuming is a good one, since my loved one tells me I don’t do it nearly often enough and she no doubt would be eager to get a picture of it for posterity.
Writing checks to pay bills seems another worthy activity to pluck from my daily life. I’m pretty sure my creditors would be excited to see me with checkbook in hand.
And then there is my late-night book reading in bed. My “Fortnight” challenge video may look like I’m nodding off, but really I’m just resting my eyes.
Reach Gary at [email protected]. On Twitter: @gbrownREP.
