Anticipation Is Keepin’ Me Waitin’

We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I’m really with you now
Or just chasin’ after some finer day

Anticipation, anticipation
Is makin’ me late
Is keepin’ me waitin’

Those are the opening lyrics to a huge hit by Carly Simon that was released in 1971. It was famously used later in a Heinz Ketchup commercial featuring wide-eyed foodies just waiting for that first glob of ketchup to drip from the bottle and hit that tasty burger.

According to Carly herself, “Anticipation” was written in 30 minutes while she was waiting for Cat Stevens to come over to her house for dinner. Name-dropper! (Meanwhile, I’m grilling hot dogs with my annoying cousin Fred awaiting his even more annoying wife, Gladys.)

It’s a terrific tune with well thought-out lyrics. In my opinion, the song was destined to be a slam dunk the second Simon came up with that title. Anticipation. It can be patience-testing and nerve-racking. But it can also be, and excuse me for overstating this, lifesaving.

Let’s take a look at the first word, patience-testing. (I believe I just made that word up.) I have been to hundreds and hundreds of concerts over the years. Maybe even thousands. If you don’t believe me, go to bigdaddygraham.com, scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page, and click on “The 20 greatest concerts I’ve ever been to.” Before you actually see the 20, you’ll see a listing of every single band and solo artist that I’ve ever seen. It’s pretty cool reading, if I dare say so myself.

Here’s an example of the kind of anticipation that would test your patience. I was lucky enough (and old enough) to be a Bruce Springsteen fan since his very first record, “Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.” I very quickly realized that I was blessed to be watching and participating with the greatest live act in rock ‘n’ roll history. If tickets for a Bruce show at the Tower on Oct. 14 went on sale Aug. 1, you better believe I got my tickets on Aug. 1. And waiting those 10 weeks for Oct. 14 to roll around was excruciating.

And guess what? More than 45 years later, if they announced that Bruce was going to tour this summer (and I wish they would make that announcement) and I got my tickets in a couple of weeks, the wait would test my patience once again.

Let’s take a look at the second word, nerve-racking. How can anticipation be nerve racking? It’s when the possible ending of all that anticipation is disastrous. Let’s say your team needs to make one free throw to win the game. The coach of the opposing team will then call a timeout to “ice” the free-throw shooter, to make him even more nervous before he has to step up to the line. Meanwhile, what that timeout does to you watching the game in the stands is absolutely, positively nerve-racking.

When I was a young buck starting out in showbiz? I did a lot of theater, and if the show I was in had a three-week run, my mother would go to about a third of the shows. And she had to mightily restrain herself from going to every single one of them. That’s how much she enjoyed watching me work on stage. She would just burst with pride.

But stand-up comedy? I would say that before my mother passed away, she had an opportunity to see me perform about 5,000 times. And do you know how many shows she came to? Two. That’s it. Two. Why? Well, if you go to a play and the play is bad, you pretty much just sit there and then you clap at the end of the show. Whereas for some unknown reason, if a comic starts to do poorly, he’ll get heckled and booed. “Don’t quit your day job!” Why this is, I will never know. And my mother would worry all day in anticipation that I might have a bad show, so she just didn’t go.

Weddings are the worst. A couple of summers ago, we were all sitting on the beach on a beautiful Sunday afternoon in June when my friend Megan came down and announced to everyone that her daughter had just gotten engaged. Well, you would have thought that Oprah had just given all these women free cars, they erupted with such joy and immediately started planning the wedding for October.

The guys all started mumbling, “Oh, brother, we’re going to have to listen to all this crap for the rest of the summer.” Then we discovered that this wedding wasn’t being planned for this October but the next October! We were going to have to listen to this for two summers?!

And one thing I’ve learned is that if a woman in my family I is getting married, I stay away from all of them those final two months before the big day. The nerve-racking anticipation of it all is just too much.

Now comes the “lifesaving“ anticipation. I am writing this article on March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. A St. Patrick’s Day that we will never forget, a St. Patrick’s Day where none of the bars or pubs, taverns or restaurants was allowed to open because of the coronavirus.

Now look, when it comes to affairs like this, I will admit that I don’t know you-know-what from Shinola. I have no idea what this next sentence is going to look like when this publication hits the streets. But I believe our government and American citizens have behaved correctly, calmly, and bravely throughout all this. These are completely uncharted waters.

But people get weird when they start losing money and, as of this writing, people are already losing income. I have spent my life performing at nightclubs and restaurants, and I’m here to tell you that they are a vital part of any community. Eventually staying home all the time just isn’t going to cut it.

So, you know what has been getting me through all of this? The anticipation of the upcoming summer. That’s the “lifesaving” part I’ve been wanting to get to. I lay in my bed and dream of sitting on the beach, reading a book with the sun beating down on me. That fantastic smell of suntan lotion. Riding a bike to pick up sandwiches to go. Grabbing my boogie board and riding waves. That wonderful “anticipation” you get when you get off the Garden State Parkway and start heading into town. There’s just nothing like it.

I mean, what’s the alternative? Dwell on doom and gloom that might head our way? Look, I realize that just believing things will get better doesn’t mean they will, but at least it’s a start in the right direction.

So, summer, listen up, you can’t get here quick enough.