So here it is... the truth of all truths. It’s the inescapable universal fact... sometimes life sucks. It’s true for everyone, so why is it that some people seem to believe that they alone have to deal with this? Or there are people that think there’s some kind of cosmic tote board that tracks the number of good days you’ve had and at some magical number unleashes a rip-roaring bad day? Where would we be if we didn’t have one of those days that make you want to run and hide under your bed? You’d never appreciate the mundane day that isn’t exciting and tends to be the majority of your days? So there are people out there who can only see the bad in everything and will inevitably grab hold of a dip in their road and turn it into the fall of civilization as we know it. Sometimes I want to freak out like that.
I want to hide under my bed with a bottle of water, a can of spam, and duct tape until the storm passes. (Of course there has to be duct tape... duct tape is essential for any kind of quality of life). I’d crawl under there when, for example: my hair looks like a cyclone hit it, I find out that a friend really isn’t, I spill a cup of coffee that cost more than a tank of gas all over me, find out that what I’m eating had been expired for a few days, my puppy eats my drivers license, I do my budget and discover that I wont be making my rent this month, I blow up the kitchen while trying to make mini muffins, my car breaks down and will cost me my first born to fix, I get a traffic ticket, I have to run the judgmental gauntlet AKA family get-togethers, or I just woke up late. But no... I have to be an adult.
Here’s the thing. We spend our childhoods waiting to be an adult able to make our own decisions. Once we become an adult we realize that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. We actually find that we wish we didn’t have to be one. I don’t want to have to choose what I’ll be doing with my life now. I mean it was great when I used to be able to say, “When I grow up I wanna....” Now I am grown up and I don’t have an answer.
Oops. I shouldn’t have snickered at Penny Mitchell in 5th grade when she unveiled her 5 year plan. She’ll prolly be the first female president, and I’ll be her chauffeur. Okay maybe I’m exaggerating, but my point is that I wanna be a kid again. I want to be able to look at the world with eternal optimism and not have to think about the leader of our nation being a complete incompetent. I want to be able to go back and correct some of my mistakes. The thing is, I can’t.
Where is all of this going? Well I ran into someone I hadn’t seen for like 6 years the other day. I was back in a place I hadn’t been in a while doing something I wasn’t sure I could still do. Vague enough for you? Well the details don’t really matter the point was this person hadn’t seen me in so long that I realized that she had no idea of the mistakes I’d made or the path my life has taken. I had a choice here. I could be the person that embellishes everything and makes it sound like the only reason they have not been nominated for sainthood was that they weren’t dead yet. Or I could tell the person a sob story making them and those around them need a handful of antidepressants.
I chose to go another way. I said a noncommittal answer, something like, “Oh this and that, no big news.” Leaving them to tell me all about their life... which I loved hearing about don’t get me wrong. But hello? It had been 6 years... did this person really think absolutely nothing had happened in my life? Maybe they thought I was living in a hole or something. Who was I kidding? The better question is why would I be embarrassed to tell someone I never see about my life? If they don’t like what they hear who cares? We all make mistakes, no one is perfect. So why do I expect that of myself and not others?
I realize that this post is rather scattered and lacking in a basic theme, but it’s been so long since I posted I think my brain is just unleashing my chaos on all you unsuspecting souls. The point is that I hide or try to.... I want to hide from the decisions and their consequences, and I want to hide my failures from others. But really who am I kidding? The only person that I am fooling is myself and the good parts tend to fade when you try to conceal the bad. For at least one moment of everyday we should all be forced to stand before ourselves and others naked.... um wait I take that back.... The next thing you know people would take that literally and show up at my place with a camera. I really don’t need a citation for indecent exposure.
Pup-date:
The puppy of doom is growing up. Why can’t we keep them small and fuzzy? On the plus side this means she is getting the idea of how the world works and what she can and cannot do. She’s even lost a few teeth. She still has her two front teeth but not the ones on each side. So really she looks like a large gerbil. So now I’m left with a dog who thinks she’s a cat, yet looks like a rodent. The other day I got sick of having to move the couch every time she tossed her toy under there (about 347 times a day) so I bought her a hippopotamus that was too large to fit under the bed and just small enough for her to still pick up (even if it does make her a bit top heavy). So I thought I had done it, I solved the problem. Ha! That’ll teach me to make an assumption that I’m smarter than a dog. So I wake up this morning to find that the toy she loved last night had a new home.... the toilet. That’ll teach me.
“Even god passes gas once in a while... so why can’t we?” -- My Dad.
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