Idiot or Wiseguy

It’s not always easy to face reality. Not easy at all, especially if that reality is made up of embarrassments, shortcomings, misjudgments, misconceptions, inexperience, and tomfoolery. I’m an average guy, with average problems, probably no different from Joe down the road but I always thought I knew, was convinced I understood, exuded the air of someone who was in the loop and appeared to all and sundry as the same guy that faced me across the vanity in the bathroom mirror. Yes there were times when I scratched my head perplexed and confused, times when I knew that I fucked up, made the wrong decision or just a plain careless mistake. Like the time when I thought that Klare, my wife of seventeen years, had already left for work. She happened to be in the bathroom when I backed into her car and instantly did a few thousand dollars worth of damage to both our vehicles. I tried to blame her, “honey I thought you had left, honestly,” but I didn’t take long before the blatant truth made me feel like an idiot. I did look in the rearview mirror but only in order to check if I still wore breakfast in my moustache.
To be a twenty-first century man is a challenge in many ways. How to pay the bills, how to stay out of trouble, how the remain sane when the whole world seems to go insane, how to keep up with the latest software, sitcom, political scandal, the news which aren’t really news but sound bites and caricatures, how to sift the propaganda from real events, how to tell the good from the bad guys. Sometimes the bad guys seem to be the good ones, like the leaders of the ‘free world’. When I shuffle through my daily bundle of solicitations form NGO’s I feel guilty chucking them in the trash. So much wasted paper, so many hungry, uneducated, abused, limb less, sick and lost people out there, all looking for a hand up or another chance.
Yes, I am extremely privileged sitting here at my late model computer, my high tech cappuccino machine, my cell phone, fax machine, beeper, several phones, tv’s VCR’s, DVD. stereo, cars and a full assortment of power and hand tools. The fridge is full of food, except there is never any beer in it, the cars full of unrenewable resources, our stomachs sated and over full, the cubbards full of chemicals like cleaners, dishwasher fluid, soaps, shampoos, sprays, paste, creams and lotions. Yes, it’s all a privilege. Just to have spare toilet paper puts us into a whole different category of humans from three quarters of the world population who squat over holes in the ground or on mist covered fields or rice paddies.
Accidents happen and most of us are just that. Random accidents, not planned or calculated, customized, ordered and delivered. Most of us have come to this world as surprises to our parents and it’s the luck of the draw in the lottery of life if we’re born into royalty or poverty. Nothing to feel proud or ashamed of. It had nothing to do with us. Only what we make of our lot is what counts, the chances we pass up, the opportunities we miss, the risks we don’t take and the gifts we squander. Most of our lives are made up of should have’s could have’s and if only’s. Like if I would have only asked that girl out I could have had that live and if only I listened. But hey, I’m no different, that’s what makes me such an idiot, a lovable idiot mind you, according to Klare, my loving wife, but an idiot nevertheless. I've come to live with it and realize that I provide a lot of entertainment for my family and friends. Maybe I'm just a wiseguy, stumbling and bumbling my way through this foolish life, for better or for worse.
I’ve thought about a lot of issues that make up our daily lives and invariably have come up against the same pattern. I usually get it wrong the first time and if I get a second chance I overdo it and fuck it up and if I get a third chance then sometimes I win the prize. I met Klare at a party, we liked each other and she wrote down her phone number on a five dollar bill since she had no other paper. “You owe me five buck,” she said when she handed me the bill with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. I was so happy I over drank and had to take a taxi back to my lodgings and - can you believe it - I paid with Klare’s five dollar bill. The next day I was so depressed. How could I be such an idiot ? I wanted to be dead on the spot.
About a month later I ran into Klare at a record store. All I should have said was that I’m sorry, I must have spent the bill and that I was devastated. The truth and nothing but the truth. Instead I groveled and explained, fibulated and blabbered to an embarrassing degree. I must have looked like a total looser. “Look Klare I’d love to get together and, you know, maybe go to a flick or have a few drinks somewhere.” I felt completely inadequate and used the wrong approach altogether. She looked at me coldly from under her bangs and shook her ponytail slowly in disgust. “I’m really busy right now, maybe some other time.” I totally agreed and watched walk away from me, out the door, out of my life.
Six month passed by and I still couldn’t put Klare out of my mind. Since I was not exactly inundated with female companionship I hang out mostly with my buddies from trade school, meaning I spent most of my free time at the pub, playing pool, drinking beer and watching the tube. One day was like any other day and they all blurred into one long night at the bar. Then one night I looked over and there sat Klare but with another guy. My heart pounded and I immediately straightened up from my usual slouch over the bar counter. What was I to do ? I fled into the washroom and stared at my unshaven, unkempt mug in the mirror. My god, I felt like such a waster. What did I have to loose. I borrowed a pen from the barkeeper and wrote down my phone number on a five dollar bill walked over to Klare and handed it to her. “I believe I owe you five bucks Klare. Thanks for helping me out that time ?” She looked at me surprised but folded the bill and put it in her purse. I didn’t linger and left the premises shortly after.
Three days later the phone rang. It was Klare asking me if I wanted to go for a walk on the water front. She could have asked me if I wanted to go dumpster diving and I would have gladly leapt at the chance. This time I didn’t fuck up. We talked and walked and time just slipped away until we sat down by a life guard station holding hands, just listening to the night. We’ve been married seventeen years now and it’s the best thing that ever happened to my life.
Over the years I tried to fit in and take part in the daily charade called life. I ventured forth and held back, got involved and conned into a few schemes, dreamed of success and contended myself with small victories like when I lost 12 pounds in two weeks of starving myself and abstaining from beer. I proved I could do it and then I gained it back. I consider myself a normal guy with normal tastes and desires, normal abilities and somewhat substandard motivation. I’m a bit lazy really, prefer to sit on the sidelines and watch the parade pass by. I‘ m more of a spectator then a participant. I’m a wait-and-see kind of guy, not the lunge and jump kind. That way I waited and watched opportunities go by and many trains have left the station that I should have been on but never mind I’m still here on the platform of life and that light at the end of the tunnel must be my train coming for me. I’ll take it, to Timbuktu or Neverland. Hells bells, I’m riding that train.

What follows are my observations of many subjects, all of them familiar to most people. I tried to grapple with them, make sense of them, try to figure out what it is that makes the difference between success and failure. I ‘m still working on it but there is one thing I learned. It’s the clichés that define life. Simplicity that solves the complicated problem, small steps that string together to a mile, it’s the journey not the destination, it’s small pleasures that make up happiness and no amount of money can buy true love. Here are my views on: Parenting, Gardening, Cooking, Health and Fitness, Eating, Investing, Sex, Fitness, Aging, Love, Work, etc. Not necessarily in that order.

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