Counting Flowers on the Wall:Worth The Hype?

I think I was about ten years old when I first thought about being a writer. Not because I had a burning desire to tell stories. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I wanted to be a writer because I thought that writers lived carefree lives unencumbered by homework and early bedtimes. Where did I get this information? Why, from the Statler Brothers' classic "Flowers On the Wall", of course.

Yes, yes, I know. The song has nothing to do with a writer, at least not explicitly. In my mind, however, the images of a writer sitting around counting flowers on the wall, playing short-deck solitaire all night, and smoking cigarettes until Captain Kangaroo came on were intertwined with the Statler Brothers voices. I have no idea why this was so. Give me a break, for crying out loud. I was ten years old.

Anyway, those images remained intertwined in my mind with the song throughout my adolescent years. Had I paid attention to any lyrics other than the chorus, I probably would have jettisoned this idealized vision of the writer's life long before adulthood. As it turns out, life had to drive its boot up my arse to shake that notion out of my head.

All it took was a couple of late-night shifts of dorm guard duty in Air Force basic training (Fly High) to convince me that counting flowers on the wall wasn't all the fun I was led to believe it would be. Granted, there were no flowers on the Air Force barracks wall (It's A Great Way of Life), but I found that the best way to stay awake at 2 A.M. was to count things, anything, over and over again. Trust me, it's way more boring than the song lets on, even if you are playing solitaire.

Yes, I've done that, too. Played solitaire. Not on dorm guard duty. Jeez, that's just an invitation for one of the Air Force's (We're Above It All) finest to blow your ear drums out while calling you names and rearranging your ancestry in a none too flattering manner. Later in life, when counting flowers failed to provide the necessary inspiration I sought, I played solitaire. Alone. With a full deck. Bored me to tears. Frustrated the hell out of me when I used a deck of fifty one. Didn't help with the writing, either. Nor did smoking.

I never did take up smoking, even though I was raised in the era of the Marlboro Man and cool television commercials for Kools, Winstons, and Newports. Never mind that every image of a writer at the time included a typewriter, a single desk-lamp, and a hunched-over writer with a cigarette dangling from his lips. I couldn't get past the hacking and the coughing, which would have drowned out the wise words of Captain Kangaroo.

Okay, by the time I figured out that I was never going to be a smoker, I knew I wasn't going to be watching Captain Kangaroo without some form of chemical or medicinal support. And I don't do that anymore. I mean, I don't do that, period. Hah, hah. And I sure as heck wasn't going to stay up all night counting flowers and playing solitaire just so I could smoke cigarettes and watch Captain Kangaroo. That would bother me. I guess the writing life isn't all that it's cracked up to be. I blame the Statler Brothers.