Lately, I’ve been kicking around the idea of getting myself some nice business cards. However, there’s just one problem: I have no idea how to describe myself in a professional context.
Yes, the dream is to have underneath my name the description My Own ----- Boss, but ironically I couldn’t be further from that at the moment, on account of me currently serving not one but two mistresses.1Mistress, as in the feminine form of Master. Please do not mistake that phrase as an admission of multiple romantic partners. I’m not that cool. So I need to come up with something more accurate in the meantime.
Currently, I would say my best guess is Half-Ass Life Philosopher. Yes, it may be a little pompous to try to claim the moniker of Philosopher–that’s why I want to stress the Half-Ass qualifier here. But, I gotta confess: I really do enjoy just sitting around and thinking about life.
Now, I wish I were a more noble breed of a thinker, pondering the depths of the universe, questioning the basis of our knowledge of reality, and what-not, but let’s face it, I’m no Plato.
I’m more like one of those modern “found art” artists who don’t make the art themselves, rather they just “find” it, and then somehow claim that they deserve accolades for just pointing at something random and saying “Hey look at that thing. I, as an inherently interesting person, do bequeath and impart my interestingness-hood to that thingy. Behold! When you look at it, think of how awesome I am!”
Or something like that.
The point of the story is, there are interesting bits of wisdom floating all around us; all you have to do is reach out and grab one of the little nuggets, and you, too, can call yourself a “philosopher.”
But if you hope to find yourself some life philosophy, it really helps to know where to look.
Me? I personally recommend you start by looking underneath the mattress of your brother’s bed…
You see, me and my older brother J. came of age in the mid-nineties. We didn’t have any of the awesome technology that offers an unlimited supply of entertainment and content that the kids these days have. On top of that, we rarely had much spending money, so we had to use our imaginations and be resourceful on a regular basis just to survive.
To meet our candy needs, we did things like, say, dressing up as twins for Halloween.
Instead of going out and buying the latest back-beat laden musical album on tape or CD, we spent many a hour listening intently to those radio stations we weren’t supposed to, waiting for our favorites jams to come on, and then in turn excitedly jamming the Record button to capture those sweet, sweet forbidden tunes on our trusty recordable cassette tapes.
And to placate the urges of our youthful curiosity, we had to resort to the classic tactic of intercepting Victoria’s Secret catalogs in the mail. Or, if one was really lucky, Frederick’s of Hollywood.
When I was in eighth grade and he a sophomore in high school, due to a series of asshole-induced life events, J. and I found ourselves living as illegal residents on a California military base with the family of one of our older siblings. Due to the lack of space, we were forced to share a room.
But, on the bright side, at least we had our own beds.
That came in handy when one day I fortuitously came across a Victoria’s/Frederick’s piece of high-brow literature in the family mailbox, and needed a secure location in which to store it.
If I had been more forward thinking, I would have stashed it under J.’s mattress. However, that was not the case, and instead kept the incriminating goods close to me under my own mattress.
Eventually the inevitable happened, and our dear mother came across the contraband reading material.
Now, one would think that it would have been an open-and-shut case against me, right? After all, the catalog was literally found on my personal property.
It just so happened, though, that I knew of a little ol’ philosopher named Occam, and his infamous Razor, which roughly states, “the simplest solution is most likely the right one.”2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam’s_razor
And in this case, I knew that Mom would find it much simpler to believe the theory that J.–a perpetual rebel and thorn in her side–would be keeping his naughty magazines under the mattress of his Mama’s Boy little brother.
So you better ----- well believe I told her that J. was trying to frame me, instead of the other way around.
Even when she gathered both of us in the room and demanded we get to the bottom of The Mystery of Which of My Teen Boys Has Been Looking at Lingerie Catalogs, I managed to stick to my guns and maintain the lie.3For the record, this was waaaay out of character for me; I’m horribly bad at lying.
Ohhhhh, was J. ever pissed. Despite his protestations that it wasn’t his, and his “why are you doing this to me?!?” hurled in my general direction, Mom found my character to be much more impeccable than his, and in the end he got his ass grounded for a week, while I got off scot-free.
I really don’t feel too bad for making him my patsy, though. Growing up, he had a real bad habit of dragging my innocent-if-not-under-the-influence-of-others butt into all sorts of trouble.
I may have been a rascal, but he was a ----- troublemaker. It was nice to turn the tables on him for once…
The immoral of the story is this:
Kids, take the time to build that sacred trust with your parents. One day you just might need to cash in a bit of that currency to frame your brother for your embarrassing misdeeds…
Oh, speaking of Victoria’s Secret, one time when I was in high school I saw one of the “Angels” in a totally different context–on E! or some entertainment channel like that–and turned to my stepmother and made some comment like “Hey, I know her from someone! Cool! I just can’t remember from where though…”
It wasn’t until later that I realized where exactly I had seen her before, and that in theory, her face should have been completely unfamiliar to me.
The only thing I could do then was just hope and pray Daisy4My stepmother’s alias. would never put two and two together and realize that maybe just perhaps perchance I was pilfering her postal publications on occasion.
Fortunately she never did, but I did learn a valuable lesson from it at least:
There’s nothing like getting ratted out by your own sub-conscious reaction when you recognize something you totally shouldn’t. Kids, keep your nose clean and hopefully you’ll never have to worry about becoming Your Own ----- Judas.
Like I said, there’s wisdom to be discovered everywhere.
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