Good Sense

There was a post on Facebook today from an old high school friend. Actually, the post was from a few days ago and comments were made on it today. One of the comments was from another high school friend who went on to say that he was wrapped for Christmas and had to lie under Rob’s Christmas tree as a gift to a girl that Rob knew. Pretty weird stuff.

I can’t help but wonder why Rob didn’t give me to a girl as a Christmas present. I would like to think that there just wasn’t room for both Ted and I under the tree. I don’t want to think that Rob felt I couldn’t even be given away for free, and certainly not as a gift. Of the two options, I suspect that number two would be the more likely. Sigh…

I wasn’t the catch then as I am now. Now, I am still alive, have a pension, most of my own teeth and low expectations. When you hit your sixties, women actually do like someone that makes them laugh. They say they do when they are younger, but that hasn’t been proven in my lifetime. Back then, I was shy, baby faced and what is the opposite of dangerous? I didn’t play guitar, wasn’t good at art, didn’t get involved in school activities as a rule and had only enough money to pay for myself. Sigh…

Sometimes it would be nice to know what people really thought of me back then. It would be nice to know what people think of me now. Well, it would be nice to know if everyone thought I was a wonderful human being whose contributions to those around him and the world in general made life worth living. If no one liked me and the most common comment was “Ken who?” I would just as soon not know.

I suspect that I fall somewhere in the middle between those two things. I’d like to make a bigger contribution, but we can only do what is meant to be done. It’s possible that I will be a footnote in one of the grandkids lives. When they are being interviewed on some late night talk show after doing something totally inappropriate they just might cite me as the shallow part of the gene pool. At least it is recognition.

You know, at the end of the day the only person whose opinion really matters is mine. I like the person I am for the most part and I try to live my life without doing any harm and hopefully making people laugh a little. I would have given me to a teenage girl all of those years ago; I don’t know what Rob’s problem was.

Good sense perhaps.