Louis Roney: Sweet as you are

• A popular song when I was in high school in the ‘30s went, “Stay sweet as you are, don’t let a soul ever change you.” I have rewritten it for today’s lifestyle to go: “Stay strange as you are, don’t let a soul ever change you. Stay deranged as you are, don’t let anyone rearrange you.”

Aren’t the differences between us the things that attract us to each other? “Divine dissatisfaction” has been behind most of the human race’s changing of a never-good-enough status quo. I’m divine — at least I’m dissatisfied!

Something new, something different, is what the schizophrenic public is dying to shell out its sweat-laden shekels for — a new toy, a new car, a new computer, maybe a new wife!

But let’s change so that we never get bored with what we have or who we are.

Ads on every side are there to urge us to become dissatisfied. Last year’s model is never good enough—this year’s has better lines, more knobs, and maybe even red hair!

During our lives, most of us collect more and better twigs in order to build bigger and more impressive nests. I don’t think a bank will lend you money on a nest, but I’ll let you know after I fly up and chat with the senior vice president in charge of twigs.

Do you know anyone who is completely satisfied with everything in his life? A divorce judge could give you names of his recent releases, if you don’t know any dissatisfied names yourself. How many people do you know who are still happily married? Do lots of guys wake up to find themselves chained to someone they don’t dig? Too late, kiddo! You may find that it going to cost you dearly to get back to the free and easy life before you married Zaidabelle. You may be dissatisfied once again, but it’ll be divine—for a while at least.

Scouting

• Often in my adult life I have thought back upon my experiences in my teens when I was an active member of the Boy Scouts. At 12, the minute I could join the Scouts, I became a Tenderfoot in our Scout Troop headquartered in a hut we built on the shores of Lake Killarney in Winter Park. The next five years, until I departed for Harvard at 17, I attended Scout meetings and participated in the wonderful things we Scouts did such as canoeing down the Wekiwa River, and camping out in our log hut on Shell Island. We Scouts learned a great deal about taking care of ourselves in the Florida wilderness amid cottonmouths, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, alligators and other indigenous folk. I have always treasured the Boy Scouts, the camaraderie, and the inherent aura of pervasive morality that inspired us boys.

Progress?

• Will Winter Park be more attractive when progressive planners get through? Are our unique historic houses being properly preserved by city ordinance? If not, one day we’ll have our very own Daytona Beach right here on the shores of Lake Osceola.

Why The Y

• Hundreds of years ago Geoffrey Chaucer said, “Summer is acumin in” – words which are most timely right now. The Lakemont YMCA, with its marvelous swimming pool, figures largely in my summer by offering a facility which my b.w. and I frequent as often as possible.

P. S.

• A lady called from Vermont to tell me that she avidly reads and enjoys “Play On!” on the Internet. No newspaper is “local” these days!

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)