He entertained a century

 kw: book reviews, nonfiction, memoirs, autobiographies, entertainers

Dick Van Dyke performed in his high school's a Capella choir and drama club until he left early to join the Air Force in 1944. This early experience began to lead him to a life of entertaining, and he is still at it, at age 100. By his own admission, he has slowed down quite a bit, but is still active with the Vantastix, a men's quartet he formed in 2000, and in occasional special events. It all adds up to more than eighty years, or my entire lifetime and then some!

I most fondly remember him as Bert in Mary Poppins. Being of a musical bent myself, I really liked his one-man band (This picture is the best sketch-style image I could produce with the NanoBanana 2 art engine).

At age 99, with every prospect of reaching 100 years and beyond, he wrote a third memoir: 100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist's Guide to a Happy Life.

He tells us at the beginning that the number of chapters is approximately 100, and not to hold him to exactness. I didn't count, but I did notice that the text is 309 pages, and the chapters seem to average 3 pages each, so it's pretty close. There is no Table of Contents, no Index, just the (approximately) 100 chapters of advice, anecdotes, and adventures.

He sets the tone with the first chapter, "Don't Act Your Age", which is great advice if you want to portray both Bert and the ancient banker in the same film, as he did. And it is generally healthy. He follows with "Make Your Own Rules", in which he explains why he offers more examples and less advice. That resonates with me, because I've found that if I offer advice, and it is followed, one possible outcome is that all goes well but the person I've advised will always feel less ownership of the result; and if it doesn't go well, I get the blame.

I'll just mention a couple of other items. "Tell Your Hardest Stories", beginning on p. 105 (and one of the longer chapters), shows how our experiences can help others who have similar problems, if both parties are willing to be vulnerable and truthfully relate them. He concludes, "Each of us has our own hard stories of crisis and struggle. When we hold them in, out of fear or shame, they control us. But when we tell our stories, we're in the driver's seat. …we are literally helping others to survive…"

And, "Write it Down" (p. 189) is exceptional advice for most of us. I've learned three ways we might relate to lists or written notes:

1. Some folks make lists and follow them.
2. Some don't make lists.
3. Some lose lists. I am in this category!

I've learned how to cope with being a list-loser since I got a smart phone: I have a Google Doc where I put lists I want to recall and random ideas before they get away. When an item is outdated I can remove it.

Dick Van Dyke has had many lucky breaks and much good fortune, but he hasn't been uniformly lucky, and he tells some of his hard stories. His claim to the title "optimist" is that he bounces back, sooner or later, and usually pretty soon. It is good to remember the past for the lessons learned and for the happy memories. It isn't as good to dwell on past sadnesses. He tells of a couple of those that took quite a while to resolve. I'll let you do your own reading to find them. They don't detract from a great fulness of happy stories.

It is a fun, engaging book. I was surprised at the end when he writes with great feeling about campaigning for Bernie Sanders in his three major Presidential bids. I guess everyone is allowed a bit of insanity… Both he and Sanders greatly benefited from the capitalist system that Sanders claims he wants to destroy.