Mr. Bojangles, Freddie, and an Indomitable Constitution

There's a pretty big demographic out there who will instantly call to mind the big pop hit for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band when I mention the title "Mr. Bojangles". The song was a folksy ballad about an over-the-hill, has-been, oft-drunk vaudevillian tap dancer. If you listen hard and get really invested, the song is a classic tear-jerker. For pity's sake, they sing about the title character losing his dog, which is enough to send me over the edge every time.

However, the longer I live, and the more jaded I get after being bilked by sad-sack stories similar to Mr. Bojangles, I half-wonder if the old coot was nothing more than a bullshot (sic, mine) artist.

But the longer I live, the more I see that every bullshot artist can provide some kernels of truth that will serve towards my personal edification.

Maybe Mr. Bonjangles wasn't quite as famed on the vaudevillian circuit as his liquor-induced tales would have you believe. But the guy could still dance better than you or I. Maybe my first boyfriend out of college wasn't really on the farm team for the Kansas City Royals, but he could still swing at a 65 mile per hour pitch better than anyone else in town. Did my pal in Chicago really share a daily bus ride with artist Henry Darger for a long-running number of years? I doubt it, but I did get to learn a lot about an important "outsider" artist.

I've finally learned to not throw the baby out with the bathwater: your garden variety, bullshotting grifter might really have something valuable to say. He just doesn't have the credentials to be taken seriously...so he invents them. He hopes you'll understand that the underlying message is what's important.

Fast forward to Freddie. Freddie had connections to everyone who was important, all the way back to George Washington and Bruce Lee. Freddie was a martial arts instructor. Again, I don't know where the bullshot ends and the truth begins, but if you ever wanted anyone to teach you how to be an invulnerable warrior, well, you wanted Freddie to teach you. The important thing was to stop with your nosy questions and just listen to Freddie's underlying message.

Let's move back to nutrition (this is a food blog, isn't it?) When I was training with Freddie in my mid to late 20's, I was probably even more of a stickler for pure, clean eating than I am now. Freddie thought that was fine...to a degree.

"Every once in a while, you have to have some KFC, or a Big Mac", he'd instruct.

Say WHAT???

Freddie was completely serious. He explained that the human body occasionally needed to be challenged in order to keep one's constitution and immune system strong. You WANT your body to be able to handle the occasional pollutant, not to fall over in gastrointestinal distress if you failed to have organic vegan everything. It's not dissimilar to an immunizing vaccination: we take in just a little bit of a disease, so when the big one comes around, our bodies are prepared to handle it.

Do we believe Freddie, or is he another bullshot artist?

I don't know, but Freddie is in better shape than most of us can ever hope to be. And I've never seen him with so much as a case of the sniffles....