Well, it’s almost the end of the year and in the spirit of the holiday season, I’ve decided to give away a lot of topics that really didn’t warrant a thousand words. Now, It’s not that a thousand words are somehow magical. It’s not like the heavens will suddenly open up and swallow me whole if I came up a couple words short. But it seems to be the number of words I usually suck up exploring a topic.
Of course, I’d like to think about having an inexhaustible supply of words. I guess all writers do. At one time, I mused that we all were born with a finite number of words. We are given lots of an’s, the’s, and or’s, of course, but a lot fewer uses of words like beleaguered, disingenuous and fugacious. I like to reason that this is why we are eventually reduced to a stream of ums, uhs, and swear words as we age, since we seem to have been given an inexhaustible supply of those.
I even wanted to write a book like that. A book where I would eventually run out of words, using up my life’s remaining allowance, finishing with a stream of leftover a’s and and’s as its closing sentences.
I never wrote it of course. It was simply too daunting, trying to keep track of the available words and never using them again once I thought my quota had been exhausted.
Well, there’s the first clearance sale item. An idea that is still awaiting the world to welcome it, if only someone could figure it out.
Let’s move on to some other sale items:
The Second Amendment: Sorry, you’re not going to find me taking either side on this one. That’s what Supreme Courts and self-serving rights groups are for. But following the most recent spate of shootings, my son put his finger on a good idea: require a background check for the purchase of bulletproof vests for anyone who isn’t in law enforcement. Yes, I hear that hunters use them, which is itself kind of sad, but for argument’s sake, they too have to go through a background check. When someone sees you have a hunting license, great, here’s your vest. Now, to be fair, you don’t get one with the stopping power of the ones the police have. That just doesn’t make sense. They should be able to take you out, you shouldn’t be able to take them out. But as my son so wryly noted, bulletproof vests are often a sign someone is planning to do some mass shooting and it’s definitely not included anywhere in the Second Amendment. Taking offers on this one.
Regrets: I could start off by saying that this is something I regret not writing about, but that kind of defeats the purpose here. Rather, I have discovered that having regrets, let alone wallowing in them, is a total waste of time. You can’t take what happened back and you certainly can’t change it, so why continue to revel in it and relive it over and over? It just sucks up valuable time and keeps you from moving forward with your life. What happened, happened. You can tell yourself any story about it you’d like, but chances are pretty good that 1) it never happened the way you like to think it did and 2) no one really gives a sh** anymore anyway.
The Perfect Crime: I have thought long and hard about this one. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to put it on sale, not that I would ever do it, but because it could cause a rash of very embarrassing robberies. Here’s the deal. The perfect time to rob a guy of his wallet is when he’s standing in front of the urinal. His mind is elsewhere, he’s defenseless and once you take his wallet, he’s going to find it difficult to run after you, at least immediately. What’s more, he’s probably not going to want to report it since the cops will be telling that story in the precinct for weeks and months to come.
A College Education: I didn’t need to go to college. I don’t think a lot of us did. It’s hard to tell my son that he should go to college when I simply went there because I didn’t want to get a real job. No one has ever asked me to prove I went to college (go Huskies!), and nowadays I could have just scanned a friend’s diploma and added my own name to it in Photoshop. Alternately, and even still occasionally, I wished I had it tattooed on my ass so when someone asked to see my B.A., I could show them right there and then. I’ll let this one go cheap too.
Unfounded Fear: Yes, I’ve touched on this a time or too, but all those fears seemed pretty founded at the time. What I’ve come to realize is that 95% of what I feared would happen never did. Instead, it was most often those things I never could have dreamed of and I’ve managed to deal with each relatively fine. If only I had known how little we can really control in our lives, I would have had a lot more fun and a lot less worry. This one is free to anyone who needs it. And if you still have unfounded fears, I highly recommend the God Jar. Write each down on a piece of paper, put them in the jar and let God handle them for you. They probably aren’t going to happen anyway.
Package Shaving: No, this isn’t about being well-groomed downstairs. Rather, it’s about the practice of companies that continue to reduce the size of packages while keeping the price the same. You know, the 16 oz. bag of coffee that is now 12 oz. or your favorite chips that are now measured in grams, like anyone outside of a drug dealer knows what a gram is.
I only wish this shaving practice would reduce the calories as well. My ever expanding waistline tells me this isn’t so. I knew I shouldn’t have bought that second bag of Cheetos in a fit of self-righteousness.
In the Emerald City, lightening the load with a quick sale,
- Robb