I have been toying around all year with having a mid-life crisis. The thought if a girlfriend who’s 15 years younger than me makes me slightly ill. Not the naked part, mind you, but the relating to her and conversing with her, part. So that’s right out. I then considered buying a snazzy car, but seriously, I can’t own a vehicle that costs more than my house and still be a libertarian. So I dug deep into my bourgeois-bohemian values and decided to, instead, complete my childhood. When I was 13 or 14 terrible tornados ripped through our area and just the other side of Lindale. They ripped the roofs off of some rather large college buildings in the Garden Valley area. I worked for my neighbor (a roofer) for a couple weeks and made several hundred dollars repairing damage from these storms. Then a young MAC was faced with the dilemma: how best to spend this booty. I was then torn between a crappy Samuri sword and a cool German made knife. I bought the shitty sword and subsequently broke it (no points for “I saw that coming” since we are talking 17 years ago and I am the protagonist in this moral tale) Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Oh boy, MAC is telling a story about choices and failure and lessons learned.” But NO! This post is to teach that kiddos that there is always a way to do things right (even stupid things). Being an American means that there is never, ever, ever, ever only one right choice. There is the choice which you must follow to its conclusion and after which you MUST make another choice. So for my impending 40th birthday I corrected my past mistake by doing two things: I bought the knife I should have bought back then: a 1980’s model Puma White Hunter: And I stepped up the useless-to-me-barring-a-zombie-apocalypse Samuri Sword game by buying a pair of Hattori Hanzo swords. These two purchases together are less than a single car payment. I don’t need them, but I feel better having done them right.
Posted on: Sat, 14 Sep 2013 00:46:10 +0000