The Perils of Being Human

HOW WE ALL BEGIN

The very first peril that you face as a human being is that you don’t get to pick your parents. Talking about a crap shoot. You can get a couple of real jewels, or a couple of real fools. If you knew what was on the outside of your Mom’s nice warm tummy, you would never leave. If you’re anything but the firstborn, you have to deal with brothers and/or sisters. That can be really good or really bad. I was lucky, I had two older sisters that were awesome, they spoiled me rotten. But my little brother wasn’t so lucky. By the time he came along my sisters had moved out and he was left with me. I terrorized that kid. He grew up OK though. He asks me if I remember doing those things, I always answer “nope”.  When I wasn’t terrorizing him I was schooling him on life. That makes me laugh ’cause I didn’t know shit. Just thought I did. Fortunately he sorted it out.

Remember that thing about not being able to pick your parents? Well I got lucky on that too. They took real good care of us and always provided all of the regular stuff. But holy cow, they didn’t take any crap off of us. Do something stupid and you got your ass whupped. But if we got sick or injured, our Mom wouldn’t leave our side until we were well. After raising me, she was a certified RN. If I wasn’t cut and bleeding, I had a broken bone. Scraped knees and elbows, bloody nose, you name it I did it. I was in my fifties when I broke my shoulder. I guess old habits are hard to break.

Just when you have elementary school pretty much figured out, you’re thrown out of the womb again into that horrible place called middle school. This is your first experience in the social melting pot. Now you have to negotiate a seriously dangerous social landscape with a bunch of jerks that you never met before, from other neighborhoods. Those people from the other neighborhoods are really weird. You have to figure out who the bad guys are and perfect your avoidance tactics. This is the first time you really seriously consider quitting school and becoming a runaway, or asking your Mom to let you be home schooled. Slowly but surely you get it all figured out, and you build a circle of friends that you feel you can trust. Against all odds you make it to that final day and you’re ready to move on High School.

Wow, you realize that the older you get the stranger the kids get. Now you have a whole new set of bad dudes and strange O’s to figure out how to deal with. Not only that your school work got one heck of a lot harder. Life at home is getting stranger. You notice your Mom and Dad are suddenly dressing different, changing hair styles ( if your Dad still has hair ) and your Mom is doing Yoga, going to the gym, trying desperately to reverse the aging process. They just sold the family minivan and bought a BMW.  Every time you start getting things figured out, it all changes again. You can’t even trust your own parents. Somehow you get through the mine field of high school and manage to graduate. You had your heart set on going to college, but your Mom and Dad spent the family fortune going through their mid life crisis. But your old man has a cool Corvette and a new Harley. Your Mom now wears a triple D bra. She looks damn good on that Harley in her new leather outfit. Makes you real proud don’t it?

Well you didn’t get to go to college but you got lucky. Uncle Bob is a Union Construction guy and he pulled some strings and got you in as an apprentice. Geez, you thought high school was hard. You have to get up at an ungodly hour and these frigging guys are animals. You gotta work in the freezing cold, and blazing heat, and if you don’t show up for work, or your late, you get a royal butt chewing. But you have another graduation to look forward to. Two long years down stream you become a journeyman.  Now you get to dish out the crap to the apprentices, and your check just got a lot bigger.

Then you meet that wonderful woman. She makes everything right. Suddenly the future is shining like the sun in Arizona. You just can’t imagine living without her and ask her to be your wife. She accepts and the cycle starts again. The big question remains. As you negotiated your way to this point in your life, how much did you learn, and will you be a better person for what you have been through? Often times we simply make the same mistakes our parents did, and don’t really gain much ground. It’s difficult being a human being. There are literally thousands of ways to fail. Fortunately there are just as many ways to succeed. Whether you win or loose is up to you, providing you were blessed with a strong mind and body. Life is good if you make it good, but it’s one hell of a lot harder.

VERITAS VINCIT   ~   LIVE FREE OR DIE