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Stuart Revercomb

Stuart Revercomb is a marketing consultant and joyously married father of four children. He seems to remember someone once telling him he ought to be a writer. "The Unseen Here and Now" -- Thursdays.

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"Thursday's Fare"

Context IS everything.

If you've ever made a public statement for a television or newspaper reporter, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You offer your viewpoint on an issue and somehow they find a way to crop it down to a sound bite that completely misrepresents your primary view -- often making you look like you checked out of school about halfway through 2nd grade.

Recently I fell victim to a local newspaper story surrounding Roanoke City Council's (in)decision making process regarding Victory Stadium. I had heard that City Council was holding a special meeting to hear public input on whether to tear down the 27,000 seat facility and build a new one, or renovate the beautiful, grand, old historic venue that sits so majestically upon the banks of the Roanoke River.

OK, so you can tell which side of the issue I'm on. Not to worry. I've already given all the good reasons for my position in a previous column, ("Something old, something new"), so I'll spare you the details here.

As part of a neighborhood group that is presently contesting the construction of a five-story condominium project, I hesitated to speak at all on any other public issue. The last thing I wanted family, friends and acquaintances thinking is that I had given up my writing and marketing work and become some rogue civic activist willing to fight whatever happens to be in the headlines that week.

Truth be known I'd rather scrape paint off a water tower than serve on City Council. It takes more dedication and love of one's neighbor than I'm presently able to muster. If you ask me, good, solid, dedicated local government leaders are right up there with teachers, saints and Mother Theresa.

It's tedious and difficult and thankless work.

But I felt the people who have been making an effort to save the old stadium had been unfairly depicted in the local media as being a bunch of gray-haired sentimentalists whose memories of the stadium's glory days are the only logic for their position. I'm no spring chicken, but I'm not exactly a "gray haired sentimentalist" either. Someone younger needed to speak. So I decided to sneak in late to the meeting, stand in support of the position and get out quietly.

By the time I got to the podium as the 17th speaker, it was clear that some levity was needed. Two members of council were making things far more contentious than they needed to be. So in an effort to get my point across with a little humor, I concluded my remarks by pointing an accusing finger at the board and stating dryly, "I plan on being mayor of this town one day, and if I have to come back and hold you people accountable for ripping down a facility we need at that time but then can't afford, I'm not going to be happy about it."

I even added a little John Wayne inflection for good measure.

It got the laugh I intended -- and seemed to get the point across as well. Mayor Ralph Smith hailed me as I returned to the back of the room and asked me when I could start.

"In about 20 years," I replied.

Most everyone in the room chuckled again and I swear the tone of the meeting seemed to improve from that point onward. "Good," I thought, "Maybe I've helped the atmosphere, if nothing else."

I ducked out of the meeting glad I had come.

Early the next morning any feeling of accomplishment went quickly out the window. I opened my newspaper to the front page headline: "COUNCIL DELAYS DECISION ON VICTORY STADIUM" and underneath it as the "tease line" of the story: "I Plan On Being Mayor Of This City One Day" -- Stuart Revercomb, Speaker At Council Meeting.

So much for the low profile.

Standing on its own, this line gave no indication of the humorous spirit in which it was offered. Any reader who's eyes fell upon it would make the logical assumption that some "bobo" named Revercomb had come before City Council to declare that he was going to be the mayor.

To take it any further out of context you'd have to leave the country.

Which is what I was thinking about.

I have received no less than 3,500 comments since the article ran -- most in support of my "candidacy." One enterprising young newspaper man left a can of Budweiser with a check for $1 attached as a "campaign donation" on my front doorstep. I'm not sure what fund raising violations that act might violate, but I'm sure the Supreme Court can figure it out.

Thus the importance of context was very much on my mind the next morning as I stood in line at a local office supply store. I couldn't help but overhear the conversation between the clerk and the customer in front of me. "So ... You all ready for Christmas?" the young female clerk asked with a smile.

"Yeeaaahhh", the middle aged man groaned, "I GUESS so. I've still got a lot to do ... I suppose I'll make it through Christmas somehow."

His response echoed so many others we hear these days. Overwhelmed, overworked people who's take on the season of hope and love and joy amounts to little more than a time to scramble together presents and go through the motions of the cards and parties and decorating that have become their "traditions."

They are traditions that are "out of context" -- that have become so separated from their intended meanings as to leave one feeling empty and alone and lost amidst the front page news that is Christmas: "That unto us a child is born -- a Savior is given, who is Christ the Lord."

That's not a context anyone wants to be separated from, but so many of us manage to, as we fill our lives with the busy details of "the season."

The aforementioned young clerk gave a remarkable answer to the man's lament. She removed her glasses as if for emphasis and squinting her smiling eyes said simply but emphatically "Sir, I'll just be thankful if I live to see the day."

Something about her way said she wasn't offering it so much as a comeback to his reply as a sincere measure of thankfulness for the moment in which she lived. And somehow the context in which it was offered became one in which she was expressing a greater hope that he too would somehow feel the same. It was a "teachable moment" and she had seized it.

"Merry Christmas," she said.

The man paused and smiled as though something inextricable had just been lifted from him. His eyes brightened.

"Thank you," he replied.

He beheld her face a moment longer, his smile growing as he did so and then turned and disappeared through the set of automatic sliding doors.

I slung my chair mat and glossy ink jet paper up on the counter.

"Can I help you?" she inquired.

"You already have," I replied.