calamityjon @ 2008-07-15T07:59:00
Submitted by CalamityJon on July 15, 2008 - 11:00
It’s my birthday today. I’m going to decline to mention my actual age, but suffice it to say that it’s close enough to forty that I’ve decided to consider myself forty from here on out. This is to prevent my having to check my every decision with the mental reminder “Jon, come on, you’re almost forty.†It’ll save me a lot of time. I may even consider myself fifty from here on out, I’ll let you know how everything develops.
Whoever said that life comes at you pretty fast certainly whistled no Dixie; the thing is that you expect it to come at you like a freight train, or a falling tree, or the New York Jets when they had any kind of offense to speak of. In reality, it comes at you like a hailstorm – a million little meteors as hard as acorns, you only actually notice the ones that are hitting you. And when it’s all over, you suddenly realize that your windshield is broken and the sidewalk crunches when you step on it and nothing is the way you remember them from when you were a kid.
Like liquid soap. When did liquid soap start popping up in every bathroom in every home in America? It used to be a thing you only saw in public school restrooms, in bus station men’s rooms, in bars where you had to walk past the cigarette machine to take a piss. It was pink, and foamed white at the edges., and was nasty.
Now it’s on every bathroom counter in the USA. I have one. It’s cucumber scented and comes in a clear teardrop shaped bottle, and has no damn grit or anything so I’m never convinced that it works, no matter how cucumber-fresh my hands smell. I’ve got a bar of Irish Spring I keep in a wet, wadded up piece of cardboard in the middle drawer. I leave the liquid soap for guests.
One of the nice things about getting older is that you start to appreciate the decisions you made earlier in your life, inasmuch as they start to pay off. Kids, for example; when I was younger, I wasn’t sure if I wanted kids or not. All I knew was that I wanted a dog more than I wanted a kid, but I wanted a kid more than I wanted a cat. Then eventually, I knew I wanted a cat or a dog more than I wanted a kid, but I at least wanted a kid more than I’d rather have a ferret. Now I’d rather have a dog, a cat, a ferret, a chinchilla, a flock of starlings, a velociraptor, a swimming pool full of assorted rabid animals, a chainsaw which has tasted human blood and can fly, unhousetrained AIDS, or a swarm of carnivorous beetles than a kid, so I’m assuming I done picked the right page to turn to in the Choose Your Own Adventure of my life.
It’s nothing personal against kids, it’s just … well, listen, it helps if you’re a student of history (like myself). You know how there were Nazis this one time? Well, you know who it was who turned into Nazis? It was babies what become the Nazis (eventually), and I’ll be damned if I’m going to aid the Nazi cause. I prefer them to be fictionalized to the point of absurdity, because they still make the best comic book villains. And don’t blame me if we get new Nazis and the threat becomes too real to affect our collective fictions – remember, it was babies what become Nazis, not me.
Anyway, it’s my birthday today.
