Bachelor # 3

Thanks to the advent of digital cable and its three hundred plus channels of useless "entertainment" I have found I spend much more time in front of the television than one ought to, in fact, I spend much more time in front of the TV than two or three ought to. Thanks to my many viewing hours I have amassed an amazing amount of useless information such as "stewardesses" is the longest word you can type using your left hand only, aardvark is the first word in the dictionary and given the choice of cash or what's behind door #2, I will always play it safe and take the money.

As part of my viewing pleasure I've found I am quite fond of game shows from the 70's. My favorite is The Dating Game. I've often imagined what I would ask if I were on the show: Bachelor #1, if you were a sweet treat, what would you be? Bachelor #2, if I was an ice cream cone, how would you eat me? Bachelor #3, if I had a wooden leg, would you still love me? Based on these answers I would still pick a loser, but he would be a loser who was attracted to me. What is it about another person's attraction to us that makes their stock go up? Are we so self conscious we don't trust we can get the one we want? If we had the choice between a great person we were unsure of or a so-so someone we knew was sweet on us, would we choose the so-so just to be safe?

Happily Ever After

When I was a freshman in high school, I took my date to see Disney's The Little Mermaid. What could be more fun than watching an hour and a half of impossible love and devotion played out to it's sappy, story-book conclusion in award-winning animation? The movie was happy, but my relationship ended up being a long, boring affair with nary a joyous moment. I find this joylessness to be true with many aspects of life -- jobs get downsized, families get divorced, even dogs run away. Buy how can this be? How can a fish/girl get legs and a prince, and I can't even get a decent cup of coffee?

Later in life I got the chance to view the original Hans Christian Anderson version of The Little Mermaid and come to find out, our little sea beauty doesn't land on her feet or marry a prince. She dies and becomes sea foam leaving us with these words of wisdom, "The prince's happiness is my happiness." This makes me wonder, should a person sacrifice his or her own happiness for the sake of someone else's? And if we all forsook joy for others, wouldn't we all be unhappy? With all this happiness bouncing around, where are the storybook endings?

Who Am I

In times of depression I tend to lock myself up at home and read, watch TV or listen to the words in my music selection. It's because of this that when I emerge from my seclusion I am ready to tackle the world and become an astronaut or a stable boy -- I even seek information on how to, where to and when to become the myriad of people I have decided is the new real me. Usually after a few weeks of watching Nova or reading Equestrian I have decided that perhaps being an astronaut or stable boy are not the best career choices. Eventually I stable-ize and the whole wicked process starts over again.

There was a time, before print media and electronic entertainment, when people were groomed from childhood to become responsible, self assured adults. Now we have the choice to be anything the mind can grasp. This lack of limits makes it impossible to define oneself. In times of depression or times of sanity how do we know who we are? Are we a combination of all the things we have tried to be, or are they just a warm up act for the real thing? When we are unsure of who we are, how do we find our identities?

Getting the Skinny

While doing a little spring cleaning late one April morn., I came across a lovely hatbox stuffed in the corner of my catchall room. When I opened it, I let out a muffled scream partly from fright and partly from excitement. In this hatbox was a decade's worth of skinny ties not to mention a few of the bolo versions made popular by New Kids on the Block. My, what memories those ties held in their noose like knots. . . the homecoming dances, school pictures, first dates, all marked by a tie and all laid out before me.

Looking around my clutter I noticed more modern artifacts from my distant past: the bag of "Happy Flowers" I decorated my first car with, the Wham album I used to stare dreamily at while jamming in my parent's basement and the stack of novels I've been meaning to get to. Being surrounded by all this memorabilia got me wondering. . . If a Vesuvius-like volcano exploded and encapsulated my room as is, what would future generations think of me? Would they thing of me as a god-like person because I owned many narrow ties or as just a man at the end of his rope? Perhaps they would say I had poor taste in music but was a well-read scholar. When it comes to the stuff we fill our lives with -- are we the things we buy?

Paradise

Once upon a Mexican vacation a 30-something man, his partner, and a couple of friends were having the time of their lives. They ate, they drank and they danced to their heart's content. But all was not well in their tropical paradise, for lying just below the surface of fun and fantasy lay the awful truth.

For one week each year this foursome left their homes, their jobs and their troubled lives behind and replaced them with the lives of the carefree people they wished themselves to be. But after a few coconut cocktails, the truth began inching its way onto shore. A tiff here, a scowl there, evidence of reality shown as brightly as the sunset, for even paradise has its rocky shores.

As reality ebbed its way into the lives of this vacationing foursome, they were faced with the inevitable questions every feuding couple must ask. Can we weather the storms that lay ahead of us and hold on for dear life, or should we abandon ship? Do calmer waters lay ahead or will the future be filled with tidal waves of regret? Is it possible for two people to create their own paradise?

Grants

The government gives grants for all sorts of silly studies. For instance, I read about one that, after years of research and countless amounts of money, discovered blue-eyed children were shyer than their brown-eyed counterparts. And??? Do these findings suggest we should enroll our blue-eyed babies into theatre or dance troops to try to get them to open up and express themselves to other children on the playground, or is it just another way to drain excess cash from an apparently abundant source the government has stashed away under the Silly Research file? Having read the above mentioned article I got to thinking about what kind of asinine research I could possibly do to get some of the cash that wouldn't involve science, advanced math or thinking in general.

We live in a capitalist country where he who dies with the most toys wins -- and we all want to win -- it's what drives us. "Is this true?" I ask myself, "Do things really make life worth living?" Economists would tell us so, and poets would say love drives the universe. What I want to research. . . what I want to know is. . . can money buy happiness?

Fashionable Friends

I had dinner with a group of friends Friday night to celebrate Sarah's 32nd birthday. We were all dressed in flashy duds being in the prime of our lives and having a few more years ahead of us before we trade our fabulous fashions for frumpy frocks. We ate and laughed and talked of days gone by. As the night progressed and the bottles of wine dwindled, our group split into several small cliques, each discussing a "remember when." Talk of high school dances and who married whom abounded.

Eventually our table became one again in time to say good-bye and go our separate ways. As I watched each bunch leave I thought about how long we had been friends and how we had come to know one another. Some were by my side through buckteeth and bad perms, others only knew me as a professional writer, still, I counted them all as my equals. It's funny how a person picks up friends as they go. Some stay a lifetime while others drop out along the way. It's as if our friends are fashions -- there's the little black dress that is never out of style, and there's the the shoulder padded power suit that once served a purpose but later became relegated to the back of the closet. Why is it some acquaintances are there through the seasons and others fall short of forever? I wonder, is there only room in life for so many friends?