Take What You Can

Life never happens the way I would like it to.

My wife never sidles up to me and whispers huskily in my ear, "I want you, you luscious hunk. Take me."

My sons never approach me saying, "Gee, Dad. That looks like hard work. Let me give you a hand."

Managers at work never ask me, "Jeff, how do you think this should be done?"

No one ever asks me how to purchase one of my books. Well, strike that. Some have asked.

But they never followed through after I gave them the information.

Somehow, in the writing of life's script, I seem to have fallen off the page somewhere. Now all these things apparently happen to other people if I read anecdotal stories correctly. You know, stories in magazines, on the internet. It seems that there are a plethora of articles out there about people with desirable lives, and I'm not talking Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, though I suppose I could be.

My wife is forever reading about power women who homeschool their children while managing a Fortune 500 company and doing sixty hours a week of charity work as they stay fit and trim so they will have explosive sex with their power husbands every night. These stories make my wife feel bad.

You know, that's the problem with reading these things. I guess they are meant to inspire, but they usually just make the reader draw comparisons instead. And the tendency is to generalize those super attributes out to a broader public which can lead to demoralization.

So, though life never happens the way I would like it to, at least my wife has never told me that the doctor says she has cancer and only three months to live.

At least my sons aren't strung out on crack and impregnating every teenage girl out there.

At least my bosses haven't handed me a pink slip.

The lack of negative is usually a positive. I'll leave the storybook stuff to the collection on my bookshelves.