It's 3:04 am, Monday morning and my phone rings. I jumped up trying to
figure out if I was dreaming or not. When I answered I heard, "You have a
collect call from, {Jimmy}, will you accept..." I started to hang up,
then decided to go ahead and take it...out of curiosity alone. I guess I
expected to hear tears, shame, or some type of remorse on the other end
of the line, but instead, I heard tales of a country music wannabe that
were anything but remorseful.
Once I finally got Jimmy to focus on the problem at hand, he begged us to
come get him from the Nashville jail where he was being held on charges of
disorderly conduct & assault and battery. Before I could get any more information
out of him, I hearda gruff voice in the background yell, "times up elf!" Matthew
and I decided to leave him locked up for the night to let him think about his
actions. Against our better judgement, we headed up I-40 to bail him
out.
When we arrived at the jail, we learned quickly that Jimmy had made
a name for himself there...not a bit surprising! We paid his bail,
which the bailiff had to literally had to pry out of Matthew's hand.
Jimmy received his belongings and we loaded him in the car to begin the
very long, silent, drive home. Several times he tried to apologize, but
he was quickly interrupted by Matthew saying, "too soon Jimmy, too
soon!"
When we were almost to Hendersonville, I heard Jimmy sniffling,
then turned around to see tears rolling down his tiny, plastic face. He
filled us in on the life he's been leading for the past year. (You know
the last we heard, he was headed to his honeymoon spot...without the
bride.) He started out by telling us that he had hit rock bottom with
heartbreak. At his lowest point, he made a call, one that changed his
life, he called Dr. Frank Page, his mentor, counselor, and friend.
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He flew to Franklin, TN to meet with Dr. Page and was greeted with kindness
and great hospitality from Dayle, who of course invited him to stay
until he got back on his feet. As Jimmy told us his story, tears
continued to flow. He said that he realized he lost focus of his dream, a
dream that he had kept secret his whole life...country music.
He went on to say, "country music was a dream and it was a time when I
desperately needed a dream, so I guess you could say that music saved my
life!" At that moment, I didn't find it necessary to point out that I
knew he ripped that speech off from Adam Braverman, so I kept quiet and
listened. I was so caught up in his story that I almost forgot that he
was neglecting to mention why he was locked up. I quickly reminded him
to get to the point. He held his head with shame when he recounted his
actions for us of Sunday night. He said, "I was playing a gig at Ryman
(by "at Ryman," he means on the steps outside) out in the audience (by
"audience," he means the people walking by the steps) sat a heckler.
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“Will play (or get you on
the “NICE” list) for food, $!”
|
I tried everything, deep breaths, counting, meditation, but after 10
minutes of harassment, I had enough. I took my guitar and I shov..." I
immediately interrupted, "that's enough, I've heard enough." I explained
that he needed to get it together for MC's sake. He could focus on his
career again once December 25th came and went. He promised that he was
turning over a new leaf and we'd see that he had changed once we'd all
had a good night's rest. After all of that, Matthew still hadn't said a word.
TO BE CONTINUED...
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