On Not being cool.....

Some of the harder moments in our lives. Realizing are parents are fallible. That's a biggie. And a bummer. Realizing we are fallible. At some point in our lives it occurs to us that we aren't going to live forever. Also a bummer. And a little anxiety provoking at that.

Which brings me to my present realization of awareness. I'm not cool. I'm not as interesting as I think. I'm not always right. I know this is hard for some of you to take in, and I hope I haven't hurt any of you with the bluntness of my flaws. Still I owe to you, the reader (literally), to share.

We have a neighbor, someone who lives in our area. Very nice person. Funny, kind. Good people, all around. Anyway, I being me, was probably overly me in trying to be funny and entertaining. When I met this person, I thought, hey this is a cool person. Someone I could hang out with. Sort of a "Fred and Barney" "Ralph and Norton" kind of deal.

However, and I go back to the beginning of this diatribe, methinks I am not as cool as me thinks. Recently our kids were playing in the yard, running around with our friends kids, and the wives were chatting. The other individual in this story, was on a phone call when the kids were running around playing and the wives were visiting. So we go to walk to away, and my wife off-handedly jokes, "Man he really doesn't like you". No malice. Just a joke. And its like a light bulb goes off (dim, flickering at best), but I remember all of these, "can you take hint" scenarios dating back almost six months.

In the first Shrek movie, Donkey follows Shrek back to his Swamp and invites himself over. Standing at the front door, Donkey says, and I suck at paraphrasing, "Don't you hate that awkward silence when somebody wants you to leave..." Then Donkey looks up and see's Shrek staring at him uncomfortably.

I guess my first order of business is to apologize to this person, who is to nice to say, "Hey Donkey, leave me alone". Next, I guess I'll stop entering dance competitions, as I rumors speculate I lack rhythm. I've already cancelled my back waxing this week, so all that remains is to sell auction off my chest wigs. I'm thinkin e-bay. Maybe Craigs-list. I bet that Craig guy is cool. His neighbors probably like him.

god bless,
j