A Man for No Seasons

Spring is not exactly my favorite season, even though most people who live in Earth’s temperate zone seem to look forward to it each year. To me, spring is just another season and, except for seeing the crocuses come up in April and smelling the lilacs in May, its arrival means very little to yours truly. Spring is really nothing more than the designated time for putting away the snow shovel and the rock salt and replacing them with a lawn mower and a weed trimmer. Big-ass deal.

I like summer but only when it gets so hot that the grass slows down its crazy growing schedule and the hedges and bushes don’t need trimmed every damn week or so. But then it’s so damn hot that all you can really do is just sit in a chair in front of a big fan and drink cold beer. And it seems that no one wants you to do that. I could never figure that out.

Then, when fall comes around and you don’t have to mow the grass or fire up the weed whacker as often, it’s suddenly time to haul out the rake and the wheelbarrow or a big tarp or giant garbage bags in order to gather up and haul away all the damn fallen leaves. And everyone thinks you should want to do that. Go figure.

All in all, living on Earth seems to be a cyclic adventure of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. No wonder so many men on this planet spend so much of their time hiding. For most of us, it makes perfect sense for us to be someplace we're not supposed to be when everyone else expects us to be where we're supposed to be. It's simply a matter of survival.

It’s All in the Wrist

Living on Earth certainly has its pros and cons. One of the “thumbs up” is eating pizza. Whoever invented pizza should have gone straight to heaven. But, since there is no heaven, that person will just have to settle for another planet with better weather.

One of the “thumbs down” about living on Earth is that Earthlings have a tendency to say the stupidest things, things that are backwards from what they really mean to say. For example, a lot of people will tell you that they “could care less” about something when, in fact, they should be saying that they “couldn’t care less” about it. That means that they care so little about it that they couldn’t possibly care any less about it. Knowing that, they will still say it the wrong way.

And that brings me to another “thumbs down” about Earth. Even when they’re wrong and they know they’re wrong, Earthlings don’t care. Right or wrong means very little to them. And, even as a little boy in Appalachia, that struck me as pretty damn strange.

And yet, I can always think of more “thumbs up” reasons for liking life on Earth. One of them is drinking beer. Whoever invented beer will certainly never go to hell. Wherever that is.