The Gift (it’s a circle kicker…wait for it.)

I’ve decided that there may come a day when I may not be able to use my arms, or, at the very least, my hands. That is why I have decided that it is imperative that I learn to type with my nose. I began this exorcise several months ago and I think I’m getting pretty good. I can type approximately 53 words per minute now (44 if I’m being careful not to make mistakes) so I’m reasonably confident that if I were to lose the use of my hands/arms, I’d still be able to keep my job and live an otherwise normal life. The next step, obviously, is to learn to drive stick with my nose. I suspect this will be a little tricky at first, you know, until I figure out the timing. I can’t see myself driving a car with an automatic transmission though, I’ve always been a huge proponent of the manual transmission, and I’m not talking about those video game, slap-stick, push button transmissions either. I’m talking about working the clutch and using the gearshift. It’s like I was saying last year at the MTFL (Manual Transmission For Life) convention in my speech entitled, “Should I drive an automatic? No.” …If anyone were to ever ask me if I would drive an automatic transmission, I would say, “No.” (The speech didn’t really go anywhere after that. In retrospect, I really should have planned it out better. I should have had, like, bullet points or something. You know, a few basic ideas why I would say no, and maybe a few scenarios that one might find themselves in and how to handle those situations. All in all, it was a pretty poor effort on my part. I’ll just have to wait until this year’s convention in November. I’m already working on a few ideas. Mostly, I just have titles that I think sound cool, like, “The Faster and the Furiouser: A look back on what I think should have been the title of the sequel to the Fast and the Furious” or maybe something like, “Speeding Tickets: Friend or Foe” but if I freeze up on stage (and that happens a lot) I’ll just go back to my award winning speech called, “Kindergarten: How I managed to fail the first time” It’s a pretty touching story about how, against all odds, I fail to pass subjects like, Finger painting, macaroni art, building stuff (anything really) out of blocks and of course, nap time (I don’t know, all the other kids were sleeping, seemed like an excellent time to go play with all the cool toys by myself).

Whoa, that was a pretty beefy, unorganized paragraph. I don’t know how I got them to put, “Bachelor of Arts, English” on that fancy piece of parchment hanging on my wall. Truly one of my greatest illusions in my young career. I felt it was time for a paragraph break though and you know what they say, “timing is everything.”

So, after I put in my allotted 5 hours of nose typing practice, I got to thinking. How do I know that the world really exists? Sure, most people figure this out by age 8, but I’ve always been a little slow. How slow? Well for starters, I failed Kindergarten, weren’t you paying attention? Are you skimming again? Well, to catch you up, I failed Kindergarten. Ok, now that you’re caught up, how else have I been progressing slowly? I just found out this past Christmas that there is no Santa Clause. It was totally an accident though, I woke up at my parents house around 2 am and had to go to the bathroom, I was a little groggy, and as I turned to go down the hall to the bathroom, I slipped because the footsy pajamas I was wearing at the time weren’t properly broken in yet, I had just bought them and the soles were still really slick on account of the fact that the vinyl was so new. Well, my Mom, my Dad, My three sisters and my 6 year old cousin were all out in the living room positioning the presents around the tree, they heard me fall and came to see if I was alright. I was, but I followed them out to the living room and saw what was going on. After sitting out there and talking to them for about an hour, I started to wonder when Santa was going to show up. That’s when my cousin broke the news. I of course cried myself to sleep. And when I woke up I was almost certain it was a bad dream, but my cousin again reminded me about 5 million times that day how stupid she thought I was for thinking Santa was real. Not a good day for me. I may have lost Santa that day, but I was relieved to find out that the Thanksgiving Leprechaun was still real.

And then there was the time I ate that huge tub of ice cream. Everyone was amazed that I did it, and I couldn’t figure out why. I said, “it’s not the first time in the world one person has finished an entire tub of ice cream.” and my friend said, “Yeah, but you’re lactose intolerant, aren’t you going to be really sick now?” And I was like, “Why? This is ice cream, I’m allergic to milk…” Three weeks later when I recovered from the coma, I had this vague recollection of someone saying, “Ice cream is made out of milk you moron.” And I’d say it was probably my fifth or sixth trip to the hospital after eating an entire tub of ice cream that I started to think maybe ice cream wasn’t good for me.

But I digress… The worlds existence, this is what I was pondering today. How do I know that what I see, hear, touch, taste and smell is all really there? All of my senses have deceived me at one point in time or another, so I cannot fully trust them. Like Socrates once said, “I think, therefore, I am.” The only thing I’m really truly sure of is that I can think. Beyond that, all else is suspect. Everything I see and do could just be some elaborate set up by my mind. Every story I read, every movie I watch, every person I meet, they could all be propagated and conjured up by my mind. All the worlds’ history could be a figment of my imagination. I could have lived every life, written every book, spoken every language, created every invention, fought in every war (on both sides no less… makes me wonder how I chose the winners…), developed the mythology behind every major religion and, consequently, created both heaven and hell, and existed in every moment of time in the universe up to this point… so I have to ask myself… if this is all just in my head… why the hell did I pull my hamstring? (and no, until I’m healed from this, the most heinous injury in all of sports, I will not let it go and stop talking about it. Should be another two or three weeks, if you want to take a break from my tri-weekly rants on my personal living hell that is a pulled hamstring, I understand)

Just something I was thinking about today. I mean, it’s pretty obvious I wasn’t getting any work done. Go ahead, run the reports. My numbers today are an abomination. I dare you to do worse. I don’t think you could. (and that’s a straight up challenge from me to you.) I’ve gotten pretty good at my job, so when it comes to not doing it, there’s no one better than me. I can actually create negative done work. I’ve often seen my supervisor exasperated, saying things like, “I don’t know how you did it… I didn’t give you anything to do today and somehow, you have more work left over to do than anyone else here.” I just shrug and say, “It’s a gift.”