Even If Nobody Asked..
1. Surgeons are funny people. When they finish the surgery they’ll tell you, “It went well” or “better than expected.” Aren’t they essentially grading their own paper? “Yeah, went great. I did my job better than expected.” Try that with YOUR customers sometime.
2. My four-year-old grandson walked up to my wife in a restaurant and said, “I’ll give you $1,000 if you go into the parking lot, touch a car and run back in. But it can’t be yours!” I admire a four-year-old who already understands that if you don’t have the $1,000, you can make the terms as ridiculous as you want.
3. Ending a sentence with “right?” turns a statement into a tiny demand for agreement. Now I’m not just listening to you. I’m being asked to reassure you every 12 seconds. We should stop doing this, right?
4. When someone tells me they’re “spiritual,” what I hear is: I want the COMFORT of God without the AUTHORITY of God.
5. White Sox player Munetaka Murakami discovering the difficulty of mixing alcohol with a second language while celebrating a playoff victory: “I’m drunk. I’m drunk. Yesterday, maybe hungover.” English is hard enough sober.
6. Calling a book “banned” is wonderfully incendiary. It makes the book and author victims. Except you can still buy the book! Often, a public school simply decided it wasn’t appropriate for certain ages. Agree or disagree with the decision, but “banned” sounds a lot more sinister than “not available in the seventh-grade library.”
7. We all know getting stuck BEHIND a school bus can destroy your morning plans. Almost as bad? Getting stuck in FRONT of a police car. Either one will destroy your chances of beating Waze to your destination.
8. “Words read, not said”: PERISHED. This used to be a recurring category until I ran out of words. You might say it had perished. Until today.
9. At a certain stage of life you get hit with the revelation: If you’re healthy, you’re wealthy. Understanding that may be the peace formula for life.
10. I’ve spent enough money on Patriots season tickets and Super Bowls this century to buy a house with cash.
For my contributions I got six banners, went to five Super Bowls, endured four TB12 hairstyles, watched two epic #11s (can you name both without Google?), two Brady wives, several gray hoodies, a Spygate, a Deflategate and more “we’re on to Cincinnati” than any grown man should reasonably need.
This is the first season this century I don’t have season tickets. I finally let them go. So what do I have to show for all that money?
Nothing. Except a lifetime of memories.
Turns out, that was the point.
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