Thursday, May 27, 2010

A Lesson in Humility

Find an old journal, ideally from those years between 15 and 19. You know those years - when you're like totally an adult and mother and father and big jerk brother can bite me!
You might start to shudder around the first entry you open to, when faced with all those angsty feelings.  Every entry seems to have a line like, "the waves of despair pound against the dark, sandy shore that is my soul!"  


Please, if necessary, take a moment to go ahead and barf.

When you get back, you'll notice all the other thousands of bad decisions you made and the even worse decision to commit them all to paper.

Decisions that would make Andy Rooney cry.

In your shame at making such a nice man cry, you might start to slap yourself, hoping to slap some sense into that horrible brat that you just know lives within you, camping somewhere on that dark, sandy shore.  Stupid teenage self, always doing terrible things!  But really, how are you still alive?!  Why are your parents still talking to you?

You might see this a lot, too: "Nobody understands me."

Man, if I had a nickel for every jerk-wad kid that utters that phrase...maybe I could buy a time machine and go back to re-live it all.  Tell me this, Dear Reader, would you go back with me?  If you did, do you think you'd just end up doing it all over again, writing soppy diary entries and mooning over weird boys?