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.