Tag: life lessons

The Secrets Of Life

lifeLife does not come with a set of instructions.  Around the time we learn to crawl, we’re taught what bites, what burns, what tickles and which farts just can’t be trusted — but after that, it’s all on-the-job training with live ammunition.  Unfortunately, without any guidelines we really never know how we’re doing.  Essentially, if life were a parlour game, we’d have no way to keep score or even know where we are on the board.  C’est le vie!

There are, however, a few tricks one learns along the way.  Since I’m a good guy who’s been wandering this world for a few years now, I’m going to pass a random sample along to you.  They’re in no particular order — because if I actually knew what was important in life, I’d write the book.

1 — A low-cut sweater will fix a bad hair day.

2 — Nobody is ever going to love you the way women in yogurt commercials love yogurt; get over it.

3 — You know you’re fat when people start saying “Have you lost weight?” Nobody ever says that to people who don’t need to.

4 —  After high school you’re never going to use algebra again — ever.

5 — You know the relationship isn’t love when, during sex, you fantasize that your partner is someone else and, after sex, you fantasize you are.

6 — You’ve  become an adult when your towels match.

7 — Eventually, every parent secretly eats a candy bar in the car, or the closet, or just around the corner so they don’t have to share it with their kids.  (So you aren’t a selfish bastard, after all.)

8 — You know you’re old when younger people talk to you in that tone of voice we all reserve for children and pets.

9 — Later on in life, nobody but you is going to give a rat’s ass how hot you were in college, so you might as well take the four years and actually study.

10 — If you’re over 26 and your job still involves extra pickles, no mayo and paper cups, you’re doing something wrong.

11 — The biggest lie you’re ever going to tell yourself is “I’ll remember that.”

12 — You know you’re rich when you don’t have to look at the prices on a menu.  You know you’re wealthy when you can do that at the car dealership.

13 — The difference between tragic hero/heroine and perpetual loser is five years.

14 — As you get older, Christmas comes faster and faster every year.

And finally:

15 — The real secret to a happy and successful life is comfortable underwear.  But you need to have enough money to afford it and the good sense to buy it.

Karma’s a Bitch

karma1I believe in Karma.  I believe good things happen to good people and bad people fry in Hell.  I believe everyone gets what they deserve (sometimes that scares me) and even though it rains on the just and the unjust alike, the just usually get an umbrella.  This isn’t merely rose-coloured Pollyanna pie-in-the-sky optimism; it’s real.  I’ve proven it hundreds of times over a lifetime of experience.  Let me tell you a story:

When I was seven, I liked Brenda What’s-her-name and I thought she liked me.  She didn’t.  She liked my lunch (my oatmeal chocolate cookies, actually.)  Somehow (memory fails me) I eventually realized this and, broken hearted, quit sharing my bounty with the woman of my dreams.  This would have been just another love lesson learned except Brenda turned out to be a vindictive bitch, even at seven.  She found herself another boyfriend who was one year older, 5 kilos heavier and skilled in the art of punching people out.  In the messy divorce, Brenda and her bloodthirsty boyfriend demanded custody of my cookies, and after a couple of nasty altercations, I came around to their point of view on the benefits of sharing.  Again, a love lesson learned. However, I was not prepared to go cookie-less for the rest of my life.  So, rather than getting my ass kicked every day and losing my cookies anyway, or just meekly handing over them without a fight, I devised a cunning plan.  For the rest of the year, every morning on the way to school, I stopped at a park bench in front of City Hall, sat down, rain or shine, and ate my cookies.  One little boy finding his own way in an unfair world.  It wasn’t too long before my personal Bonnie and Clyde figured out they weren’t getting any more cookies, and after a month or so, I began to appreciate the intrinsic value of solitude.  Time on, we all went our separate ways: I moved to the West Coast and I assumed Brenda and the boyfriend (I think his name was Genghis or Attila) both died, face-down in a ditch somewhere.

Fast forward some 30 plus years.

I was at a house party back in my hometown, and an old friend introduced me to a woman,
“You remember Brenda?” he said.
In actual fact, I didn’t.  However, Brenda turned out to be an intelligent, witty high school teacher who was married to one of the funniest Agro-engineers I’ve ever run across.  She clearly remembered me, and we were all having such a good time that I figured I’d just fake it and we ended up spending most of the evening together.  At some point, handsome husband disappeared and Brenda turned to me and, with a hint of remorse in her voice, said, “Does your mom still make those oatmeal chocolate cookies?”  Ding dong!  All the lights went on, and even though I hadn’t thought about Brenda in over 25 years, suddenly there she was: the same little girl who’d strong-armed me out of my cookies, and she looked genuinely sorry.
“Yeah,” I said, “She does.”
“You know, I’ve never ever tasted cookies as good as those ones.  I wish I could learn to bake something that good.” And I could hear she meant it as some sort of a backwards-reaching apology.
I should have said something, but I didn’t.  I just looked at her, directly into her, into her soul. And she let me — and over in the corner where we all keep our various bags of guilt, she had one with my name on it.  I could see it in her eyes, and for a nanosecond, we both knew it.  I could have fixed it for her. I should have fixed it for her.  But I didn’t.  Instead, I said, “No, people like you aren’t capable of things like that.”
Then, I stood up and went outside for a cigarette.  When I got back, Brenda and handsome husband were gone.

And what’s the moral of the story?  Brenda may still be dragging around a bag of guilt with my name on it.  Too bad — she deserves it.  The problem is the sins of a child are different from the sins of an adult and ever since that house party, I’ve been carrying around a bag that says “Brenda.”  One of these days, Karma’s going to catch up with me.

I Have An Evil Twin

twinMany years ago, I discovered I have an evil twin.  He lives on the edge of reality so he can occasionally come marauding though my life, break something, and then disappear without a trace — leaving me holding the bag.  However, despite the fact he’s a total asshole, I’ve grown to appreciate his presence and, on occasion, I actually like the guy.  Over the years, he’s dropped me in enough crap to fill the Augean Stables, but without him, I wouldn’t have learned some pretty serious survival skills.

My earliest memory of him is watching a smartass kid (who looked exactly like me) shouting insults in a nose-to-nose disagreement with some very big boys.  The situation deteriorated, my evil twin disappeared and I discovered the humiliating power of the public four-man wedgie!  Lesson learned: the personal simile is not the best strategy when dealing with unreasonable people.

Once, in the heat of the moment and, against the advice of friends and a vast body of empirical evidence, he decided we should have sex with a notorious psycho.  Sometime between round three and daylight, my evil twin wandered off, and I woke up with a crazy woman who thought we’d mated for life.  Three months, 4 letters (no texts in those days) 25 phone calls and 6 stalking visits later, she finally got the message.  Lesson learned: never think with your dick.

As a sophomore in university, he thought it would be great fun if we knocked the pompous off a particularly pompous tenured professor.  The whole semester was witty and precocious and even developed into a bit of a swagger across the English Department.  Unfortunately, just before finals, my evil twin vanished, and I was informed that “although I had considerable talent I had not demonstrated any respect for serious scholarship and my grade, therefore, would be adjusted accordingly”  Lesson learned: pompous and vindictive are pretty much the same thing, and pick your targets ’cause karma’s a bitch.

Every once in a while, my evil twin still shows up, but he has grown older and wiser.  Now, he just eats the last cookie and puts the empty box back in the cupboard, shouts at the wrong people when he’s angry, and tends to forget the importance of family and friends.  So, basically, if I’ve pissed you off in recent history, cut me some slack: it’s probably my evil twin.