Mistakes
It is comforting that the present so quickly becomes the past, and can then be denied more easily. Of course, denial isn't the only proper response to one's past; regret works too. They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and that may be so. But regret is the cold beer the paving crew drinks after a hard day's work.
Everyone has a few regrets: the tuxedo failure at prom, the kindergarten pants-wetting incident, that awkward dead body in the closet when your girlfriend's mom dropped by. My past is essentially composed of various kinds of regret held together by a connective tissue of self-loathing. But strangely, I have only two major regrets, which isn't bad. Unfortunately, these regrets involve the political fate of our nation and future of the human race.
Back when I was in college, I used to go hiking in the foothills near campus when I needed to think. One night, I was doing just that as I rehearsed a speech I was to give the next day to my Sociology class, idly playing my newly-bought laser pointer over the dark hills.
Suddenly, a strange light appeared above me. Blinded, I heroically shielded my eyes and cowered helplessly. Then the light was gone, and an elaborately contoured mirrored box sat in front of me. I peered inside and saw an impossibly intricate pattern of light and immediately realized, as anyone would have, that I was looking at an alien. Unlike earthlings, who are composed of subtly organized carbon-based molecules, the alien was composed of subtly organized patterns of light.
Quickly sensing that I was the sole ambassador of the human race, I fell to my knees and cried, "Welcome, strange being. I greet you on behalf of Earth and hope that our species may coexist peacefully and usher in a golden age of shared knowledge and mutual progress." The box ignored me and promptly began to flirt with my laser pointer.
I heard later that the box abandoned its mission of interstellar peace and eloped with the laser pointer to Las Vegas, where they could mingle with the neon of the strip. They live a happy but hardscrabble existence with the alien (who calls himself Ray) working part-time as a high-definition television, and the laser pointer as an aging stripper named Lucy. The patrons are generally too drunk to realize that she is in fact a small presentation aid, and she usually claims to be master's student in sociology paying off her student loans. It's a hard life, but they make enough to raise their pride and joy, a small string of Christmas lights.
Yes, my actions prevented the meeting of two civilizations, but this regret is actually only number two on my list. As for number one, I beg your lenience, gentle reader. I was only a boy. Only…a boy.
My grandfather used to own a tavern in Chiago, and when I visited him as a child I would sit at the bar with old Polish men as they drank after work. One day, a brash man with an expensive suit and a Southern accent too thick to be authentic swaggered unsteadily through the door. He plopped down on a vacant seat, rapped twice on the bar, and demanded to know what city he was in. After being told he was in Chicago, he whistled and murmured, "I was in Atlanta yesterday, I'm sure," and ordered seven shots of rubbing alcohol. In childlike wonder, I looked up at him with innocent eyes and asked him why he drank so much. He became quiet and looked into my questioning eyes. "I don't know," he said, adjusting his cowboy hat showily. "But tell you what. From this day forward I will drink no more." He tipped his hat. "And you can take that to the bank and smoke it."
He had several more drinks that night, but I read that a few years later he did stop, after the seed I had planted in his mind began to take root, I guess. He turned his life around, they say. Emboldened by his conquest of the bottle, he took on greater and greater challenges. I still remember the determination in his eyes as he stomped out of the bar in those cowboy boots. He opened the door and turned, silhouetted against the wintry gray Chicago sky and slurred, "Young whillper…whiffer…young fella, I'm gonna lick this drinkin', or my name ain't George W. Bush."
Our actions in life are like those of poor racquetball players who know not where the ball will carom, but carry on their awkward, pointless game wearing the ridiculous goggles of their Preconceptions and the ill-fitting shorts of Social Propriety that strangle the balls of their Freedom, dreading the potential presence in the locker room of Death the totally naked creepy shaving guy of an Angry God, at which point the simile collapses from exhaustion.
Sleep, The unconscious do less damage than the oblivious.
Everyone has a few regrets: the tuxedo failure at prom, the kindergarten pants-wetting incident, that awkward dead body in the closet when your girlfriend's mom dropped by. My past is essentially composed of various kinds of regret held together by a connective tissue of self-loathing. But strangely, I have only two major regrets, which isn't bad. Unfortunately, these regrets involve the political fate of our nation and future of the human race.
Back when I was in college, I used to go hiking in the foothills near campus when I needed to think. One night, I was doing just that as I rehearsed a speech I was to give the next day to my Sociology class, idly playing my newly-bought laser pointer over the dark hills.
Suddenly, a strange light appeared above me. Blinded, I heroically shielded my eyes and cowered helplessly. Then the light was gone, and an elaborately contoured mirrored box sat in front of me. I peered inside and saw an impossibly intricate pattern of light and immediately realized, as anyone would have, that I was looking at an alien. Unlike earthlings, who are composed of subtly organized carbon-based molecules, the alien was composed of subtly organized patterns of light.
Quickly sensing that I was the sole ambassador of the human race, I fell to my knees and cried, "Welcome, strange being. I greet you on behalf of Earth and hope that our species may coexist peacefully and usher in a golden age of shared knowledge and mutual progress." The box ignored me and promptly began to flirt with my laser pointer.
I heard later that the box abandoned its mission of interstellar peace and eloped with the laser pointer to Las Vegas, where they could mingle with the neon of the strip. They live a happy but hardscrabble existence with the alien (who calls himself Ray) working part-time as a high-definition television, and the laser pointer as an aging stripper named Lucy. The patrons are generally too drunk to realize that she is in fact a small presentation aid, and she usually claims to be master's student in sociology paying off her student loans. It's a hard life, but they make enough to raise their pride and joy, a small string of Christmas lights.
Yes, my actions prevented the meeting of two civilizations, but this regret is actually only number two on my list. As for number one, I beg your lenience, gentle reader. I was only a boy. Only…a boy.
My grandfather used to own a tavern in Chiago, and when I visited him as a child I would sit at the bar with old Polish men as they drank after work. One day, a brash man with an expensive suit and a Southern accent too thick to be authentic swaggered unsteadily through the door. He plopped down on a vacant seat, rapped twice on the bar, and demanded to know what city he was in. After being told he was in Chicago, he whistled and murmured, "I was in Atlanta yesterday, I'm sure," and ordered seven shots of rubbing alcohol. In childlike wonder, I looked up at him with innocent eyes and asked him why he drank so much. He became quiet and looked into my questioning eyes. "I don't know," he said, adjusting his cowboy hat showily. "But tell you what. From this day forward I will drink no more." He tipped his hat. "And you can take that to the bank and smoke it."
He had several more drinks that night, but I read that a few years later he did stop, after the seed I had planted in his mind began to take root, I guess. He turned his life around, they say. Emboldened by his conquest of the bottle, he took on greater and greater challenges. I still remember the determination in his eyes as he stomped out of the bar in those cowboy boots. He opened the door and turned, silhouetted against the wintry gray Chicago sky and slurred, "Young whillper…whiffer…young fella, I'm gonna lick this drinkin', or my name ain't George W. Bush."
Our actions in life are like those of poor racquetball players who know not where the ball will carom, but carry on their awkward, pointless game wearing the ridiculous goggles of their Preconceptions and the ill-fitting shorts of Social Propriety that strangle the balls of their Freedom, dreading the potential presence in the locker room of Death the totally naked creepy shaving guy of an Angry God, at which point the simile collapses from exhaustion.
Sleep, The unconscious do less damage than the oblivious.
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