I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of Wally Cox, the
actor who played “Mr. Peepers” on a TV show of the same name. You’d have to be
at least my age or close to it, I think, to have seen it. No doubt you can find
episodes of it on YouTube if you’re curious. I bring him up because of a sort
of lookalike person in my real life experience who was very important to my
family for a brief period of our lives. That was Mr. Ivans:
Mr. Ivans would surely have been on speed dial if such a
thing were available back then—I’m talking about the ‘50’s. But, alas, the only
way to contact him in those days was by rotary phone with no voicemail
capability. The good thing was that it never really involved an emergency
situation, though at times it seemed like that to us.
Mr. Ivans was a TV repair man upon whom we called to rescue
us from the disastrous situation regarding a malfunctioning horizontal or
vertical hold on the screen, a blackened screen that we couldn’t on our own
bring back to life, or a weird kind of fluctuating image that we couldn’t seem
to adjust by normal means of dials and buttons. Those were the days of
temperamental TVs viewing.
He would eventually arrive on the scene in the evening with
a toolbox filled with things to make life normal again or as normal as it ever
got. He was a man of few words and would get right to work doing whatever
strange scientific/technological thing he did behind the TV as we all watched
in great anticipation. He would be pulling out tubes and testing them, removing
mysterious parts here and there, looking for loose wires, and turning the same
knobs that we had been turning for a few days without success.
We trusted him to figure it all out—this man who always
seemed to work miracles with his box of tools and his unrelenting patience. When
he was somewhat satisfied that he had fixed it, he would sit down in a
comfortable chair in the living room and watch TV for a while to make sure the
problem was completely solved. And more times than I can remember, he would
fall asleep, and my parents would have to decide how and when to wake him up,
and send him on his way. But if Mr. Ivans couldn’t fix it, it was time to get a
new TV from Sears and Roebucks or some other place that was maybe having a
sale. (I have another story to tell you about that at some other time.)
I guess there are people in this world who have seemingly unconventional
ways of doing things and yet a natural ability to make things right whatever
the problem may be. And they seem to do so effortlessly. They are the
overlooked geniuses who really don’t care if they’re overlooked (which makes
them even more admirable) and they are quietly confident in who they are and with
what they are meant to do and be in life—other peoples’ opinion of no
importance. They are self-actualized.
We don’t need TV repairmen anymore because TV’s are simply
made to replace, not repair. There are no more tubes or parts of yesteryear.
The only way to get inside them to see what’s wrong is to break their fragile
plastic casing. Even if you did manage to get inside with minimal damage, there
is very little you could see or do about whatever is wrong.
But I will say, that what we see on the screens of our minds
and hearts do get issues that need fixing or adjusting from time to time. The
horizontal and vertical holds that keep our view of life steady get out of
sync—things seem uneasy and out of control. Sometimes our vision goes blank
because we can’t seem to see clearly or think straight. Or life seems uncertain
and changes before we have a chance to get grounded and make sense of it all.
Oh, that we could call a Mr. Ivans to come with his toolbox
and patiently, with confidence, make the proper adjustments to bring life back
into true focus. But, alas, the likes of him is no longer available. However, if
you will go with me this far, it may be the case that each of us has that kind
of “genius” within us if we will trust and allow ourselves to call upon it. And
it may turn out that all that is needed is for us to realize that we have given
the forces outside us more power than they deserve. i.e.-we are not the same as
that which is happening around us in spite of how things may seem.
Pause, Breathe, and as
the Red Queen in
Alice Through the
Looking Glass says:
“Remember who you
are.”
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