They Are Lying

Its funny how unimportant those important things become as you grow older.

I can remember a time when a bad haircut would nearly bring me to tears. A bad haircut meant that the cute girl you were trying to impress wouldn’t be impressed. To tell the truth, I knew she wouldn’t be impressed even if I had a good haircut. I’m just not one of those guys that impress girls. Later on, it was the length of my hair that became important because long hair meant that you embraced the counter culture and all the entailed. I probably never really understood what it entailed, but as long as I looked the part, that was good enough for me. I noticed a while back that my hair is moving to the thin side, I still have most of my hair, but it is spreading out. At my age, any hair is to be enjoyed, well, not the stuff in my ears or on my back.

Doing well in school was never an option for me. I would have liked to do well, and I would dream of doing well, but the universe had other plans for me. I did well socially in school; well at least I thought I did. My friends have been friends for decades and those that I rarely see at least pretend to be happy when we meet.

Work is the place where people spend years getting to the top of their profession. A few are successful, but most end up somewhere in the middle and get busy downgrading their dreams. My job wasn’t one that you could actually rise in the corporation. I took pride in doing a good job and getting that job done just as fast as I could because I went home when I was finished. There was a time that if I worked past 1:00PM (quitting time 3:00PM) I would put in for an hour overtime. I suppose that failing to meet your goals at work might just cause a breakdown in some people, but I always felt my home life was far more important.

I can remember how angry I would get at my kids when they wouldn’t do their chores. I would get angry when they didn’t perform as well as I knew they could. I worried that they might follow what I considered the wrong path and end up as less than they could be. I worried that I wasn’t hard enough on them and that I was too hard on them. I had no need to worry; all three have turned out to be wonderful humans and a credit to their mother and myself. I’ll take the credit, why not?

I spent too much of my time doing what is right when everyone around me was doing what was wrong and enjoying life more. Well, I don’t know about enjoying life more, but they didn’t waste their time like I did. I couldn’t be the person I am if I behaved in a “wrong” way. Maybe I should have lightened up a little, because these things just don’t seem important any more.

Really, the only things that seems important now is that I haven’t hurt too many people during my journey, I have made people laugh more than I have made them cry and I hope that when I am gone people will say the world was a better place because of him.

I don’t mind if they are lying, it would be nice if they say it though.