Buy It, Enjoy It, Sleep It Off ... Just Balance the Checkbook Afterwards

My ancestry is German, Irish, American Indian and probably a couple of other things. I am a good old fashioned American mutt. In fact, I had always planned on starting my autobiography with this statement, "I am a mutt born of mutts." And being a mutt has made a bum of me.

Between the ages of sixteen and thirty-six my interests were devoted to art, literature, the theatre (the kind with the "re" and not the "er" ... I was a snob), music and the female shape. I was a philosopher, a Shakespearean, a dilettante, a socialist and, on occasion, an enfant terrible. The only sections of the newspaper I read were the sports page and the Sunday Arts ... with the exception of two years where I admit to reading Parade Magazine. I never so much as used the financial page for anything other than to put down for the puppy.

Perhaps that has been my mistake. Money and I have never had the easiest of relationships. Sure, we love one another passionately ... but we can never seem to make things work out in the long run. I have lived paycheck-to-paycheck for my entire adult life, regardless of whether I made $800.00 or $80,000.00. Money just never seemed to want to stick around for the long haul.

Neither have women ... but that's an entirely different blog entry.

I remember well the days when I would scrounge through the car and couch looking for loose change to buy a pack of cigarettes (this was, obviously, back in the day when cigarettes could be purchased with loose change) and how happy I would be when I actually found enough dimes to make the purchase. In some ways, those were more innocent times. Ahhh ... the pure virtue of a pocketful of change with nothing to do but be spent on something right then and there.

Responsibility takes a toll on the simplicity of that life. Damn that life-sucking vampire called responsibility!

Live fast and Die Young! With each passing day that old idiom becomes less and less romantic. There was a time when I truly thought that pulling myself off of the floor in a public restroom and stumbling back out to the bar to have another round was a fanciful notion. And I will admit, from time to time I am nostalgic for those days. But, when thought of with a rational mind, it is not something all that glamorous. Sure, an occasional foray into the world of a young man's debauchery is nice ... but I wouldn't want to live there.

I'm still a wild-and-crazy guy ... I just do it on a budget now.

My Favorite Poem

Did you ever sit and ponder while you walk along the strand,
That life's a bitter battle at the best;
And if you only knew it and would lend a helping hand,
Then every man can meet the final test.
The world is but a stage, my friend,
And life is but a game;
And how you play is all that matters in the end.
For whether a man is right or wrong
A woman gets the blame;
And your mother is your dog's best friend.
Then up came mighty Casey and strode up to the bat,
And Sheridan was fifty miles away.
For it takes a heap of loving to make a home like that,
On the road where the flying fishes play.
So be a real life Pagliacc' and laugh, clown, laugh.

Knowledge is Power

"You're never too old to learn something new." That's the ol' optimist's cliché, isn't it? The one that's always counter-pointed with "You can't teach a dog new tricks." Well, I am an old dog and well ... I never knew any tricks to begin with. Maybe that's why I welcome actually learning something.

Many of us are too stubborn and set in our ways to accept the fact that we don't know everything. I, for one, have always known that I don't know everything. In fact, it's one of the few things I do know ... hence the reason it's so easy to accept not knowing everything. One thing I do know how to do, though, is run a paragraph into a circle. Much like this one. And I'm too stubborn and set in my ways to stop writing in this "circular-and-going-no-where" method of mine. I know that. I accept it. You, on the other hand, should've just skipped this paragraph. Nothing was said.

I have learned a number of things recently ... some good, some bad ... and am taken aback by just how much I thought I knew. Here's a few example of things I have learned recently:

1) Always read the label on any medications you take, like for example phenazopyridine, so that you don't freak out when you experience harmless yet startling side effects, like urinating the juice from a blood orange.

2) Christmas just seems different when it's 75 degrees and sunny out. Instead of curling around a fire with a hot cup of cocoa you find yourself sitting in a recliner without a shirt on drinking iced tea. That's not very Christmas-y, now is it?

3) I have never been one for "business casual" dress and am ill-prepared for it.

4) Trucks are cool. I don't care who you are, trucks are cool.

5) The cost of living in the South is less than in the Greater NYC Metropolitan area ... but it's odd what doesn't cost less. For example, TV dinners. Banquet TV dinners (yeah, like you've never eaten one) are actually more expensive in North Carolina. Utilities (electric, cable, etc.) are pretty much the same. But I'm not going to complain. I bought a carton of cigarettes and a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon the other day for less than $40 ... try doing that in NYC.

6) We are more dependent upon electricity than we realize. Try going a week with no electricity. You can't do much of anything.

7) That little lizard is right! Geico does have the best auto insurance rates.

8) Kidneys are funky little organs. Did you know that when your kidneys start to fail that you retain fluids ... thus putting on weight? I had always assumed that every illness eventually resulted in weight loss. Not so kidney failure. Weird, huh?

9) VH1 Classic is, by far, the best network on cable television.

Now, I have to admit that I've been guilty, on more occasions that I care to count, of not accepting new knowledge. I think we all have, at one point or another. But in shutting out new information (whether because we're stubborn, proud or have a belief system that forces us to live as though it were 1642) we are robbing ourselves of the sheer joy of learning something new and being amazed at it. The most mundane pieces of information are something to revel in ... so long as I didn't know it before.

Maybe I should go back to school ... ?