(Once again, apologies to the memory of jimmy
Buffett. Know you are missed by
parrotheads everywhere…)
Granted, I left fifty I the rear
view mirror a couple of years ago, so I’d be looking back at it – but, who said
I had to be looking forward at it, hm?
Been reflecting on a phrase that
gets thrown about quite a bit – “ignorance is bliss.” As I’ve gotten older (starting at about age
12, really,) I’ve been learning more about how the world works, how deranged
people can get. And, the more I learn,
the less happy I get. It’s an inverse
relationship.
It really started about age six,
with my mother’s third husband and his two spawn. Because of him, I had ten years of
abuse. Because of his two idiot sons, I
learned to fight two opponents when I was six years old (I also learned that
the man alone in the fight has a great advantage – anything you can hit is on
the other side. And making them hit each
other saves effort for you. So, I’d set
‘em up to hit each other – until I got to where I could throw them at each other…)
I always found it amusing when mom
would bring home the rock salt for the water softener – half-dozen or so 80#
bags – and the three of us would be assigned to unload it. I’d go down, lay one on each shoulder, tuck
one under my right arm, and walk away.
They’re both looking at one
bag (the same between them…) looing about as confused as two monkeys trying to
fuck a football… (Granted, each of them
could fuck up the moving parts of a rock, so there was that…) They were all proud of the bodies they were
developing in gyms from working with weights.
I didn’t care about my physique – which I got from just plain working.
Which allowed me to carry 240# of rock salt when I was only 170#
myself. Or what allowed me to carry
4500# of brick & mortar helping a friend’s father build a barbecue (I was
the hod carrier – I went faster than he could keep up with. Then we went and I got my picture up on the
wall in the pizza place because I ate an entire
“Maximus” pizza by myself, with breadsticks, and asked what was for afters…)
(The problem with lifting weights
is that it’s all programmed motions, and you end up with those programmed
motions when you try to work. Not
everything had a grab bar with a load on the ends, or is shaped like a dumbbell
or a kettlebell. Some stuff is awkward –
comparable to holding up a 20-kg anvil, straight-arm extension, by the
horn. Try it sometime. Even a 10-kg anvil is a challenge… Since I didn’t lift weights as a rule, I
didn’t have programmed motions, and no muscle memory. This allowed me to work in whichever
direction was most efficient – and it still
allowed me to build a good deal of strength!
The footy team hated me when it came time to do the weight training unit
in Phys Ed, because I’d just calmly run right past them. Eight hundred pounds on the squat rack? Three sets of 20. Twenty-one hundred pounds on the
hipslet? I’d do more, but I ran out of
plate. Four sets of 25. I was big, but I had massive legs… I was so happy when BDU pants hit the surplus
market, I was tired of taking darts out of oversized pants to make them fit –
33” thigh, 28” waist, 50’’ chest.)
(Yeah, I wander. If you haven’t figured that out by now, now
you know. I leave my wanderings in, in
the hope that they entertain, and possibly provoke thought. Besides, if I’m writing it, there has to be a
reason for it, don’t you think?)
So, as I’m leaving fifty well
behind, and my wife is staring hard at seventy.
The upside is that she hasn’t seen the things I’ve seen, and doesn’t
know most of the things I know. So, she
has an easier time being happy. For this,
I am pleased – if one of us can still be happy, best that it be her. I don’t want her to know the things I know,
and there’s a good reason that I haven’t told her everything I carry around in
my head. I do not wish to burden
here. There are things I will never tell
anyone – my burden is mine alone to
bear, I don’t want to be responsible for wrecking anyone else’s happiness.
So, what does make me happy?
People. Specifically, women. I have always preferred the company of women. However, it’s not all women that make me happy, even though I do generally prefer the
company of women over the company of men.
Specifically, there are only a few specific women that can make me
happy. Y’all know who you are.
